Biology has two aspects: the why and how. The why is evolution. The how is protein synthesis.
Evolution is best understood in terms of game theory. Protein synthesis is nanotechnology – self-replicating information systems.
The underlying theme of biology is information processing – the way systems interact, and the way simple systems create complex patterns. Combine the two and you can explain most everything about living beings.
You can learn the basic patterns of these elements in a few days. Everything you learn about biology afterwards will be filling in details.
Learning the game theory behind evolution will help you understand much more than biology. For example, human psychology and behavior, individual, social, economic, and political can be understood as a set of iterated game theory scenarios.
My point in saying this is not to reveal any deep truths, but to show how the essentials are missed for a flood of facts. (I refer to both biology curriculums in schools and popular nature documentaries.) No wonder half of Americans believe the world is 6000 years old.