Beagle and Caz.
Sorry to have trodden on your sensitive bits. Perhaps “strike” is too strong a word. “Poke” would do, perhaps. Only one student had to endure this unorthodox technique, and he WAS taught how to select the correct attitude. It just was that he was not very good at doing it. He got it eventually, and reached the end of his course satisfactorily.
You probably found that students are often quite different from each other, and respond to different techniques; some need to be coaxed, some spoken to firmly, others respond to jocularity. But I reckon that's granny and sucking eggs stuff.
However, in 3 years of UAS instructing, none of my students failed to pass on to the next phase of training. None requested an instructor change. I lost one only, and he went willingly as he had chronic air-sickness. My “nape of the neck” technique came in handy in his case. He could not wear an oxygen mask, used only for radio and R/T, as it made him gag. So he was permitted to use a throat mike. When we discovered that he was prone to airsickness, he was never able to unplug or disconnect his throat mike before throwing up. The sound which came over the intercom was not good, and in this case, a quick pinching motion of my fingers at the clip behind his neck was able to disconnect the mike.