David does seem to have possibly got the short straw with his instructor.
Provided HIS downwind and other checks include everything and provided he's not doing something dangerous, the instructor shouldn't really be trying to impose a whole new way of doing things on a low hour PPL.
Equally though, none of us should ever close our minds to the possibility that there may be more to learn about flying.
I fly for a living, so by definition I have a certain minimum level of knowledge and experience, but I am constantly learning new things from people who are more experienced than I am. Similarly, I am sure that these people are also probably also learning new stuff from people who have even more experience than they do.
One of the things that I like most about flying either as a hobby or as a career is that no matter how long you have been around aviation there is ALWAYS new stuff to learn. As someone once told me, you don't know what you don't know :-)