This very subject was discussed in an article by John Farley in this month's edition of Flyer.
For the reasons you mention he advocates the use of throttle for speed and stick for ROD as you do.
Indeed if you lose speed very low down and stuff the nose at that point you can be in trouble and nobody can argue with that.
However when you fly gliders you have no option but to get it right (other than being able to close the airbrakes)
I think that most experienced folks do a combination of both (which is really what needs to happen) but for teaching purposes the mantra attitude = stick = speed seems to work OK as does engine = ROC/D.
Interestingly enough most folks fly ILSs using the stick = ROD and throttle = speed method.
FD