CPB ... yes, I probably could've phrased my previous post a little less stridently. I did, however, believe that you were saying something that was a tad too generalised. I accept that not all instructors (ground and flight) are good instructors and, indeed, everyone can have an "off-day" once in a while.
After several thousand hours instructing, I found it was still possible to assume a certain amount of knowledge on the part of the trainee, sometimes. I suspect there's probably some "human factors" stuff at work there.
The passage that GW quoted from Kermode does, however briefly, touch on the forces at work in the initiation of a climb. That bit about what happens when you have reserve engine power in S+L flight. Using that additional thrust, without a change in angle of attack, will initiate the climb.
Thus, thrust contributes to lift to create the "total reaction" vector, which is how this came up in one of my earlier posts. This is the basis I've used in briefings to explain to a trainee why, in practice, thust needs to be applied to initiate the climb. Of course, such briefings are necessarily tailored to the typical type of trainng aeroplane which is not overly endowed with thrust and, naturally, that point must also be made in the briefing.
This works out in practice too because, while a climb can often be initiated simply by converting excess speed to height, such a climb cannot be sustained without an increase in thrust. This is pretty easily demonstrated in flight. One must then touch on the fact that, when you run of out reserve thrust, you're playing with a stall to attempt further climb.
When I was trained as an instructor, it was emphasised that we need to keep briefings as short and simple as possible, without bypassing the essentials. Also, that it was entirely appropriate to give a briefing that covered all the essentials for that exercise alone.
Thus, the S+L briefing was intended to teach the student why it is necessary to have particular combinations of power and attitude to maintain S+L flight. If the basics of this are covered well at that stage, it is much easier for the student to grasp the concepts related to initiation of a climb. And, of course. to the subsequent maintenance of the climb.
It is certainly useful to start a briefing on climbing by reviewing our defined forces in S+L. Indeed, it is always a good idea to start any new topic with a review of what the student should already know. This is where shortcuts can often occur, because an instructor can be easily persuaded to assume a certain level of knowledge by the student.
All things considered, I suspect we've been talking more about instructional technique than the material itself. It had not been my intention to hijack the debate along those lines. Still, its clear that we all need to exhange views of such matters periodically, as it helps to keep us all up to speed and, thereby, to make us all better instructors.
There's one helluva thin dividing line between giving the student as much as is needed to understand what is about to be taught in the aeroplane, and complicating the whole thing with too much theory. This is the line that each instructor walks every day because we all need to know more about the subject than we'll normally need to teach. This was another point that came up in my own training because you never knew when a student was going to ask one of them really complex questions!