I used to, as a young G3, love spinning and teaching spinning. I have spun, among others, the 150/152 and Traumahawk many, MANY times...albeit approaching 20 years ago.
Then one day a 150 refused to recover...we finally did recover and regained level flight under 500 agl. I tried everything and finally pushed the control column so far forward so fast (in the process probably leaning forward) that we went past the verticle and I half rolled before pulling out of the dive.
Anybody who suggests the tail of Traumahawks doesn't waggle and twist alarmingly when in a stall hasn't looked backwards when doing so. After about 3 turns the Traumahawke spin also flattens out significantly and the rate of yaw speeds up apprecably (with the nose going way down again) after recovery actions are taken. I used to think that was so cool...probably the frustrated Test Pilot in me
I still think they should be taught/students should be exposed to them however I think the same about basic aerobatics.
I believe more value could be had however by more time spent exploring the low speed handling characteristics of various aircraft. I was blessed with flying with mostly experienced instructors in my ab inition period...caused by the lack of movement in the industry 25 years ago in Oz. We used to do all sorts of fun things like seeing how slow we could fly level and not stall, climbing and decending orbits using only the trim and doors
We even used to do simulated turn back from EFATO and, in the 152, got very good at it..sometimes losing only 150'.
My point is we spent a lot of time manouvering with the stall warning just chirping, had a lot of fun and learnt a heap about where the aeroplane would bite...it saved my bacon more than once a few years later flying heavily loaded aircraft in the bush in PNG.
Perhaps there are not enough Instructors out there these days who are comfortable enough with aircraft to do this...and perhaps they are not interested enough to do this...just marking time before the big shiny jet interview...but you can easily find guys who do teach this stuff in most places...in Pitts/Decathlon etc...and I'm sure they would get in a Piper/Cessna and expose you to the places in the envelope that hurt.
Chuck.