This is why I said one should see the instructor and not the student.
In this age, nobody should get a PPL not knowing what a transponder is. if they do, the PPL probably won't be much good to them.
I think these matters should be discussed - within civilised bounds of course. There are several reasons for this:
ATC is generally very professional and (UK ATC certainly) will always handle these situations very calmly. BUT when the man retires to his teabreak at the end of his shift, with his nerves a bit more stretched than they would be otherwise, he will share his experience with his mates, and with the passage of time this results in prejudices building up within the profession.
I went to a NATS presentation (West Drayton) a while ago and - even though these are IFR sector (enroute) controllers and not tower or FIS/OCAS controllers - the institutional bias against certain groups who are just a bit less perfect than "British Airways Public School Accent Nigel" was quite blatent. Bizjets got slagged off big-time; it's unsuprising that these have more level busts since they often fly to random locations at short notice so the pilots have less time to learn the route by rota. Foreign airlines likewise; I got the impression that if NATS got their way they would ban all foreign planes from UK airspace. They certainly wanted to ban all single pilot jet ops, claiming this would be CAA policy; this would be an eventual disaster for all private IFR because modern small jets are no harder to fly than so much other old stuff that nobody questions.
Fortunately the people who expressed these views were not policymakers but there is no prize for guessing what sort of things get discussed over the beer with a visitor from the CAA or the DfT.
In time, this sort of thing will work its way up into policymaking, which is obviously not going to help private GA.
The other thing is that a lot of "lower-level controllers" in the UK, notably some A/G types at certain airfields, have zero patience and will give a pilot who is not quite on top of things a hard time. Totally out of order but it happens.
There is a fair number of tower controllers in certain places abroad who will do the same to a UK pilot who is under pressure and cannot find some VRP.
I guess we will always differ on how much a PPL should be taught...