Morgans wrote:
"Dudley Henriques" wrote

In any good training program, you need a constant schedule of dual inter
spaced with periods away from the aircraft. ANY program that pushes a
student on an inflexible ridged time line is in my opinion not an
optimized training regimen.

I hear what you are saying, an on the surface I don't disagree. But !...

It is also far from optimum, to wait so long in-between lessons that there
is no continuity, and much time is spent trying to brush up on skills
forgotten since the last lesson.

So, given that, and the fact that some time will be spent observing, would
the observing help teach some lessons not realized fully while actually
flying?

Would it not still be better to have intensive learning taking place, than
have intensive forgetting taken place?

I feel like there is a good chance that the intensive training may be better
in the long run, even though it may not be the best. Perhaps if it is the
only way, then it should be used, and then some follow-ups to check and see
that good practices are still taking place.

I don't know the answers. It just seems like this may be a way, for some
that this is the only way.
Optimum initial primary training as I have observed it during my tenure
as an instructor is a fairly constant schedule of dual inter spaced with
a period of at least a day or two between lessons.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this "off period" is
critical and absolutely necessary so that what happened in the airplane
has time to sink in, be researched, thought about, and questioned and
answered.
Many instructors in my opinion make a HUGE mistake by trying to teach
everything about everything while the student is flying the airplane.
Any good lesson plan should allow for a brief period of pre-brief
between the CFI and the student, covering the basics of what will be
done during the session along with some idea of how to accomplish the
upcoming tasks. While the student is in the air attempting to accomplish
these tasks, the instructor should keep things as simple as possible,
allowing the student to rote the task. Then after the flight, there
should be a period of de-brief, where what was done by rote in the air
is explained in the detail needed to begin the next process which is the
time period between lessons I deem so critical.
It's during this "down time", that the student is encouraged to study
the theory behind what was done in the air, asking whatever questions
are necessary to allow a more comprehensive understanding of what has
been done in the air.
The bottom line on all this is that if these periods of down time are
skipped or neglected, the result in many cases (and I have observed this
over fifty years in the flight instruction business in one capacity or
another) is a student progressing rapidly, but mainly by being able to
duplicate the required flying tasks based on a rote understanding, which
is not optimum for the student.
In other words, rushing the student can produce a pilot who can perform
a task and even fly the airplane and pass a test, but not necessarily a
student who understands what he/she has been taught on a higher level
which would have been possible by utilizing more down time between dual
sessions.


--
Dudley Henriques