Chuck
I guess the question is why are the 5 hours in the syllabus (it was 4 hours in my day.)
What did I get out of my 4 hours?
1 - an understanding that I would kill myself fairly quickly if I tried to fly in cloud for any length of time
2 - enough instrument ability to turn around and get back to VMC
3 - a realisation that clouds can be scary places (entered real IMC and got into a small embedded CB)
4 - a better appreciation about how the instruments worked and displayed
5 - an understanding that instrument flying is very different to visual flying
So all in all, I'd say that this was time well spent