Purpose:
What would you think if the government only required you to take Driver's Ed for you to get your driver's license?
Ridiculous! You have to practice driving a car before you can be certified to drive; I could tell a 15-year-old about driving until I was blue in the face and he still wouldn't necessarily be a good driver.
The strange thing is that a lot of people try to teach programming that way; they simply talk about the language without showing what happens when you actually use the language.
In my classes and on this website, I'll try to give plenty of examples of Visual Basic at work, so you can actually see what's going on. I'll assume that you have no previous knowledge of Visual Basic; all you need is be able to use Windows 95.