"making it too easy," also known as "effective teaching"

It mystifies me why some teachers seem to feel that if you make it possible to understand and pass your classes, you're "structuring too much" or "making it too easy for them."

For example: one month ago, none of my students could fill in the blank in this sentence:
"Clay tablets covered with ____________ writing tell us much about life in ancient Mesopotamia."

If they can now fill in the blank, isn't that a good thing? Isn't that an example of me TEACHING them something?

Yet I can just hear a certain voice in my head, saying that I should use the straight definition of "cuneiform": "A form of writing that uses groups of wedges and lines," because otherwise I'm "making it too easy." Hello? How is that "too easy," just because I'd be surprised if any of them couldn't do it?

It's all part of the "school as hazing" mentality that I have come to loathe so much...

To me, the whole goal of teaching is that the final test should be easy for those who have paid attention and done their homework--easy, easy, easy.

It should be something they could not have done before the unit, that they can now do after the unit.

Isn't that teaching and learning, in a nutshell? I don't believe in trick questions, I don't believe in pulling questions out of a footnote or sidebar or caption if we haven't talked about that item in class and on homework. What is the point, if not to feel smug and superior, and make the students feel like they'll never be good enough? Shouldn't they feel rewarded and victorious after a test?

And yes, I'm currently writing a final exam on the Fertile Crescent, my last activity in student teaching. Woo-hoo! God, I hate this.