A reasonable article Shem and I don't disagree with a lot of what you say. The orals we had at my first "commuter" airline were pretty intense (edit - I wrote that not remembering you were at the same one). That aircraft had a 14 step procedure for electrical smoke of unknown origin that had to be memorized. Just one of many memory items on that airplane. My first type rating in a jet (DC-9) I had to draw the electrical and hydraulic systems from memory, among other things. Some airlines have no memory items now.
That all said, and because I have been on the training side of the equation for many years, the newer more modern aircraft systems are so complex that the previous level of systems knowledge is simply impossible within the finite requirements of an airline or other type rating course. Boeing is who I am most familiar with. On the 787 they have written only one page in the FCOM about the actual brains of the airplane, the Common Core System. No detailed description. I have access to more detailed data from the Boeing CSIDs ( Crew System Interface Documents). For the Common Core System it is closer to 40 pages of description and diagrams. Why did Boeing do this? The easy answer is there really is not much a pilot can do about how the system operates. There are 2 Common Computer Resource (CCR) reset switches on the overhead panel, which are not normally used. Pushing them basically reboots that specific CCR and is a QRH (electronic checklist) item only.
Similarly the electrical system is so complex that the FCOM does not even touch on certain areas of it. For instance there is a 270 Volt DC portion to the electrical system but no mention of it whatsoever in the FCOM. It is actually written as Large Motor Power Distribution System in the FCOM ( 3 paragraphs, no diagram). There is only a very simplified Power Flow and Distribution schematic in the FCOM, no more full electrical diagrams.
While systems like the above have become much more complex so too has FMS and Flight Guidance as compared to the early DC-9 and 727s that we flew. Those were easy airplanes to get in and start-up. I could get a DC-9 going in under 10 minutes( I think 5 was my record). The autopilot was basically just a wing leveler with some pitch and altitude holding capability. No FMS to program, not much to set-up really. Today that is certainly not the case. Anything under 30 minutes in a B777 or B787 would feel incredibly rushed.
Airlines tend to place much more emphasis on use of the automation, and they need to, because that is the normal way of flying the airplane. By comparison Flight Safety International is stuck in the dark ages of system ground school. They spent an inordinate amount of time on systems classes and not near enough on the FMS and autoflight. I had ground school instructors talking about the temperature of the fuel as it moved through the fuel pump ( Are you "blank" kidding me?) This while almost totally ignoring how to program the FMS and not adequately describing blue/green needles (really important stuff).
In today's information society there really does need to be a compromise on what we are required to know versus what is nice to know and what we really don't need to know. The human brain can only retain so much information (penguins on an iceberg anyone?). While it would be grand if I could draw a 787 electrical system from memory or remember the temperature of the fuel as it goes through the fuel pump it does almost no good whatsoever in operating the airplane.
