Are you studying those topics as a biology major, or as a student of some other major subject? There actually is a lot of criticism among biologists about how far behind the textbook representation of those topics is compared to the professional literature of biology. If "cladistics" is not a familiar term to you from your undergraduate education, that would be diagnostic of a poorly designed biology course, for example. See

http://www.evolution-outreach.com/content/6/1/11

for a discussion of this issue and other issues about problems in biology education.