Brainfade - I'm in complete agreement with you. If a professional pilot is incapable of managing his/her aircraft in terms of configuration, speed and approach profile achieved by the mark one eye ball talking directly to the hands and feet via the grey bit between the ears he/she really should not be at the pointy end.
As you rightly say, practise does make perfect as does good instruction in the first place. I've been surprised (and shocked) by the extreme reluctance of some FOs to disconnect the automatics and simply fly the aircraft. Conversely, there have been some who are all too ready to 'pole' it under inappropriate situations. As with most things in avaition there is a time and place for most things and visual approaches ceratinly have their place.