AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2012 - 36

LICENSETOLEARN

BY ROD MACHADO

In defense of stick-and-rudder training

letter of the alphabet. The important difference between the two was that whole language reading also is antithetical to the building-block principle of learning. The results of the whole language reading philosophy? Several generations of students never learned to read, read properly, or even spell correctly. In 1995, after years of failure, California put the whole language idea in the Dumpster and adopted the building-block strategy of phonics. Many aviation corporations, flight centers, and universities now exclusively use experiential progeny). Our pilots didn’t fly jets, they flew airor scenario-based flight training curriculums, all planes that demanded exceptional stick-and-rudder Longtime flight instructor Rod skills. As one veteran instructor told me, you could with FAA sanction and approval. As one instructor Machado has give a P–38 pilot a P–51 manual to read, then send put it, we’ve “front-end loaded” our flight trainbeen an aviation ing syllabi with learning modules that introduce him to the airplane—where he’d easily and safely speaker since advanced behavior skills during training times check himself out in the machine. Pilots of that era 1976. could do these things safely because they had good when the emphasis has always been on basic skills. stick-and-rudder skills. Their lives depended on it. This explains why student pilots are being taught to Without the mooring provided by stick-and-rudder pilots of fly instrument approaches before they’ve learned how to land an earlier age, general aviation’s flight training curricula came an airplane. under the influence of the airline and jet community. It was no Failure to focus on stick-and-rudder skills—especially during longer enough to produce a private pilot when it seemed as the formative hours of a primary student’s development—often though you could create an airline pilot lite, the GA version of reveals itself in the same way a geologic fault does when it comes the professional pilot. But a funny thing happened on the way under excessive stress: something breaks. A commuter pilot’s to the practice area: It disappeared. failure to lower the nose of his turboprop airplane during a stall In the past 20 years, the idea of emphasizing stick-and-rud- is just one example of such a fault. After Congress directed an der skills during a primary student’s training became passé. In aviation group to probe why some professional pilots seemingly its place, many prominent flight schools and academic institu- forgot how to fly, the group recommended that airline pilots tions began emphasizing higher-order learning strategies, such be better trained in manual flying skills, among other things. as scenario-based training—a method used extensively in the The fault lines appear to be opening even wider, given the airline and jet community and originally intended for use in FAA’s recent demand that flight instructors receive more trainüber-sophisticated flight simulators. The intent was to expose ing in the concept of angle of attack. How is it possible that a student pilots to higher-order training scenarios (decision mak- flight instructor can be deficient in such a basic stick-and-ruding, risk assessment, situational awareness, et cetera) while they der concept? One can only guess how little the students of these were simultaneously taught how to turn, climb, descend, and fly instructors know about the subject of basic airmanship. Yet, straight and level. Flight training syllabi evolved to reflect these many of these instructors were trained under our newer, higherambitions, with emphasis on autopilot usage, GPS instruction, order training philosophy. If this strategy were as effective as and pilot workload management, to name just a few of these its proponents claim, then we should be seeing a reduction in higher-order scenarios. The FAA even published an advisory aviation accidents. Unfortunately, the personal flying accident circular encouraging instructors to combine basic presolo flight rate has increased over the past decade. That’s a sad statistic, training with cross-country trips, thus eliminating the once- but it does support the idea that we need to modify our trainvenerable practice area altogether. ing curricula to emphasize stick-and-rudder skill development. Unfortunately, there’s no law of psychology—not one!—supEducational psychology teaches that students learn quickly porting the idea that presolo students learn the basics of flying and effectively when they’re taught using building blocks of more effectively or efficiently when they are distracted by the knowledge, one step at a time—but no step before its time. burden of simultaneously having to learn higher-order flight Returning to a flight curriculum based on stick-and-rudder skills. The concept is antithetical to the building-block principle training is how to make flying safer for everyone, while making of learning. For years the progressive teaching movement advo- the private pilot certificate more affordable and attainable. We cated a higher-order, experiential method of reading instruction should certainly teach higher-order skills, but not by sacrificknown as the whole language reading method, which teaches ing fundamental skills in the process. students to guess at the meaning of words, while phonics emphasizes the building blocks of sounds associated with each Visit the author’s blog (www.rodmachado.com). 36 • APRIL 2012

t happened in the early 1990s. That was the time we saw the diminishing influence of World War II-era flight instructors (and their instructional

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AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2012

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