I want a balance...

This semester, I have become very frustrated with the classes I am taking. Some are general requirements and some are for my degree. I feel that in some of my classes I have not learned much from the actual class material.
In one class, I felt that, as students, were we being taught as if we were in fifth grade. But, newsflash, we aren't. We are college students. And even though the class may not be an upper level class, we still wanted to be treated as if we actually know something. For this class, a lot of the things we have been doing, many of us did in high school, so we have a general idea. But it seems that in an attempt to make an idea easier, it is actually confusing us more.
On the other hand, one of my other gen. ed classes feels like an upper-level class. I feel intro classes are meant to cover the basics of a subject. In the class I am in, I don't really know the basics. We have been doing and talking about things that one would discuss in a 300 or 400 level or even grad school. Plus, it is very difficult to understand when you have no idea what to base it on. We have also had extraneous assignments that take more time than given. It would be different if this were the only class I was taking, but alas, it is not. It would also be different if everyone in the class chose to be there and was majoring in that subject.
So the question is, where do you find the right balance on how to teach students? No student wants to be treated like they don't know anything, but students also don't want to feel like they don't understand because they were not given basic concepts. I guess I don't have enough experiences of how it should be done. Ideas?