Thanks for the comments, Peter--I was wondering when you would step in--being the one who is the most inclined to pursue questions about theory--

As a teacher, you can spend all of your time answering questions that come out of the misconceptions, but when you do, you loose control of your lessons, and the end result is that the student doesn't get anywhere.

Students have to start out learning things by rote, and praticing them til the teacher is satisfied that they have them. Explanations come later--You need to know your scales, your chords, and how to construct them, but the why is not initially important--

You memorized the capitals of the states, provinces, and nations,but you didn't need to know why they were the capitals when you learned them--those questions are saved for much later, same with music theory--