Mike
I would go with a lot of what you are saying.
I wonder sometimes whether this discussion is not more to do with a trend in training towards AVOIDANCE rather than exploring an aircraft in extreme attitudes?
Stalls too are recovered at the incipient stage and you could go the same route with dives, spiral dives avoiding steep turns etc.
You mention car driving.
Personally I would add skid pan training to learning to drive. There is a big difference between driving a car and handling a car and the same goes with aircraft.
There is flying an aircraft and handling an aircraft. We are teaching pilots to fly aircraft not to handle them.
The car is a good example. The student driver is taught to drive a car and all is well until one day the car goes too quickly into a corner or touches a slippery patch and the driver is not equipt to deal with the understeer oversteer or slide and ends up in the wall.
I would recommend a new PPL investing in a couple of hours aerobatic training post PPL so he can explore aircraft handling. Not only is it fun but it will pick up his flying confidence no end.
Pace