A LOT of developers have raised this issue. But even more of them are rethinking the whole concept of e-learning. Page 7 to 6 is a valid idea if you are thinking of a book, viewing a slide show, or traveling in a car. When you go down the highway, there is a physical next and previous town, and you have to go through one to get to the next (just like reading a book or viewing slides, [the electronic equivalent of pages]). If you are traveling by airplane, once you get in the air, you don’t have to go to any specific town. You are free to go wherever you want (just like navigating e-learning). The idea of a slide (that the learner hasn't visited) that should come before this slide is more suited to the concept of a book than to e-learning.
That said, I know there are certain customers that don’t get the concept of the freedom of navigation e-learning gives us. They are mostly government agencies, or hide-bound big businesses that think because they are very knowledgeable about their product, that makes them knowledgeable about learning. If you are working for one of them, you may be bound by their idea that learning comes from going through a book page by page. In that case, go ahead and create a page-turner.
Whether you are creating a book or e-learning, menus should be created by sections and concepts, not pages (or slides). I know that there are certain concepts that have to be tied together, and covered in a specific sequence. In that case, even if they are spread out over several slides (which is better than cramming everything onto one slide), there should be only one menu option. Within those sections, a small sectional menu may make more sense than one menu that has everything in it.
Perhaps CCAF is the best model. If so, those sections best represent the destinations of menu options.
I say all this to express the idea that we can expand the concept of how material can be presented with e-learning.
