OneDay, I admire you for sharing your story.
Instructors are the first line of defence against bad airmanship. As a student you do look at the instructor to teach you the "full package" that includes airmanship and safety conscious decision making. If they are lacking those skills themselves, it will take quite a strong student to recognise it and make the obvious more mature and safe decision to rather move to some place else. If you can do that, I recon you will get quite far in aviation.
Also agree with your last post that you can not generalize. There are some really good instructors out there. In the same breath, there are some bad students as well, that no matter how hard the instructor try to teach him, he "knows best". That is just as big a problem.
Also, if you get to a senior position (Captain, Chief Pilot, etc.) you must lead by example. I have seen to many times that as soon as some guys strap on that fourth bar, they turn into this know-it-all a
oll and do whatever he thinks is best, regardless of the SOP, company policy, etc. and try to show his F/O how good he is.
So the problem is bigger than just one part of flying.
H.S.