"many classically trained persons have great difficulty keeping good time without a conductor"

The B grade ones - yes!

The thing that they have forgotten is that you MUST keep time for yourself - and also be able to play by ear when playing with others.

Classical Quartets (violins viola and cello) never have a 'conductor'.

Incidentally a Symphony Orchestra can play quite well in time together without a conductor standing out front (well, everybody does have their music in front of them!). Everybody takes their timing lead from the 'Orchestra Leader' or the Senior Desk First Violinist (they watch his bow tip! - down stroke for first beat of a bar, usually, but not always, depends on the phrasing).

When a teenager (before WWII), my dad was Assistant Leader of one of the private Symphony Orchestras in Brisbane - this was before the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. When the leader would get called away, he would lead. In the 1950s, when the QSO would come to Bundaberg where we lived, he would take me backstage at half-time & afterwards to have a chat with some of his old mates from earlier days - I used to get autographs for the conductors too - I remember Henry Kripps.

Robin