Compared to some other books on the same topic, A Brief History of Time is a poor book. It just happened to be the first popular book on the topic.

Fully agree with labs (not just science but engineering as well). 2 years into my grad program, I visited my undergrad campus and a professor asked for feedback on the education I received. I told him that all the labs need to be revamped. As taught, they were a waste of time. Virtually every lab I did went like this: "Design a circuit (e.g. amplifier) with the following characteristics. Then build it and confirm via measurements."

The challenging part was the design, which was all theoretical. It was then trivial to wire it up.

I recall one time I was given a project to build some circuit. I built it, but when the professor evaluated it, he saw the output was very fuzzy. He wanted to know if it was due to my circuit or whether the input was fuzzy. He did a bunch of interesting things on the oscilloscope to determine that it was indeed the input. Now that's the sort of stuff they should have taught us!

As for motivation for subjects like physics/other sciences. It's a challenge. As I said in a different comment, there often just isn't enough time to teach both. I think professors expect students to have some level of intrinsic motivation already. For something like physics, you really cannot reduce the math involved - most undergrad physics curricula have too little math as it is!