Completely agree; learning to cook shouldn't be about cooking different recipes, it should be about generalizing the lessons from each one. That said, I think an effective way to learn it is just to try cooking a million different things and keeping notes (mental or physical ones).

My best resource is foodwishes.blogspot.com. His videos focus completely on watching the ingredient, never himself, and I feel like he does a pretty good job of always explaining why we are adding in a spice or choosing a particular cooking method, or when you can feel free to improvise with your own preferred flavors. And there's also a good variety of different dishes, so its not just one type of cooking. I have been following recipes from foodwishes for about a year and I feel I've learned a lot (for an amateur) about how to cook.