Oh dear, another example of how the centre of the aviation universe is the UK....
It's very true that the FAA system is far more practical and basic PPL students don't understand the concepts in such depth.
This is nothing more than UK ott arrogance of how they're teaching the world how to fly..... The US have a right to conduct their own training affairs based on vastly more research and a thankfully a lack of silly JAA style Aviation Science that seems to make the equation 'theory heavy'
By the way I have trained in the UK and US and like both systems but I don't like this silly "we#re superior than you" approach to training, we're all in it together no matter where we trained.