but have often preferred the initial teach to include teaching and the use of full automation
I am not a fan of that policy. That is because some students becomes totally bewildered at the amount of information they are forced to absorb from myriad sources on the instrument panel. They are urged not to "chase" the FD needles; yet how else can they centre them when initially the dancing needles are so compelling? They are advised to "look behind" the FD needles to see the true attitude of the artificial horizon; yet are castigated if they prefer to turn off the FD to get a better appreciation of nose attitude.
Students can soon lose whatever situational awareness they may have had, with the result the aircraft gets away from them in a flash. At this stage a student may have no idea how to fall back on his basic flying training if he gets flustered with the automatics. That is because he has never been allowed to get the feel of flying a jet transport before being thrown into the deep end associated with the full use of automatics where heads down into the CDU happens shortly after lift off. Is it any wonder that students new to type become so addicted to the automatics that they never get the opportunity to get comfortable with "flying" the aeroplane. The rot soon sets in and an automatic monkey is born.