It has been done more than a few times.
Yep. Very recent thread here:
http://www.pprune.org/private-flying/451575-spin.html
When I brought up the "unusual attitudes" words earlier today, I didn't just mean spinning. You can also think about accellerated stalls (load the wings up in a turn), full-power (departure) stalls, upset recovery from the inverted, recovery from spiral dives, flight well above Vno (close to Vne), maximum performance turning (think dead-end canyon), extreme sideslipping (think engine fire in the air).
This is then done not to teach the PPL student how to perform all these maneuvers to any sort of standard, but to let them know that in most flight regimes they are quite far from the edge of the envelope, and even when they get near the edge of the envelope from there, the aircraft is still fully controllable. But also to teach them what phases of flight they are very close to the edge of the envelope, and what happens if they **** up then.
Open book exams: No no no no.
I agree that in the exam you should not just be able to bring in any arbitrary book. But I would like the exams to be modified so that you *need* to look stuff up in a (foreign?) AIP, POH, LASORS or other reference publication. Just so that you can demonstrate that you are able to find certain information. Or better yet: Use their online equivalents. (Need to find a way to prevent cheating then.)
Oh, and while we're talking about the theory overhaul: The thing that bit me when I finally got my PPL (trained in the US, under CAA oversight, using the Jeremy Pratt books, flying in NL) was that the theory books didn't always adequately explain what the ICAO rule, the JAR-FCL rule and the country rule was. Particularly local oddities such as the quadrantal rule - it was never mentioned that that applied to the UK only. Likewise, for instance, the way countries use the A-G airspace classes, the types of FIS services available, booking in/out rules, customs issues and the GAR form, flight plan requirements & submission.