gatt wrote:

On the way back he also discussed how he thought the Private Pilot
curriculum ought to put more emphasis on stall avoidance rather than
recovery; teach 'em how to recover, but more importantly, teach them how to
recognize that they're headed for a stall situation before they get there.
He said when you're learning stall recovery, you're watching the airspeed
and slowly anticipating the deliberate stall; in reality, he says, people's
reaction time often makes it impossible to recover from a stall because
unlike in training they weren't prepared for it to happen. In those cases
it would have been better had they been trained to identify and correct an
impending stall situation and avoid it before it became necessary to try a
sudden stall recovery.

This is something of a mystery to me as
well. I've spent most of my stall training
dancing on the rudder keeping the nose
pointed straight. It's occurred to me
that rather than playing with an impending
stall, I should develop the habit of breaking
it right away.