Hi pudaoking,

Your points are well made and I cannot find fault with any of them. They are reasonable and will “mostly” be found to be true in actual experience.

The only difference of opinion is I don’t believe it will do any long term damage to study on ones own and I believe it could actually be of benefit in some ways.

I do agree that ones students can be a good reflection on the instructor’s ability, however, if one is a beginner he does not have the expertise to judge based upon observing students or instructors since he cannot judge if what he is seeing is skillful or not. Something may appear impressive that in reality is nothing special and something that appears nothing special could be a display of advanced skill. Since a beginner has no experience to draw from to guide his judgments observing the students won't tell him much.

I too appreciate your comments and look forward to reading more of your posts.