When I taught guitar, I worked mostly with classes--I found that classes work best for beginners(most of my students were adults of one sort or another) because they give each other moral support--Also, it is a great relief to be take turns struggling and being corrected, rather than being under the gun all the time--

I found also, as you observed, that most guitar teachers/music stores/schools don't care about beginners, that is to say, they dpn't really bother to try and communicate anything important to them, about either the instrument or the music--mostly, they just throw stuff at them as if to say,"Make what you can out of that, and, if you get good, come back, and then maybe I'll teach you something worthwhile."--

I didn't start to be successful with my beginners until I started to thing about what I needed to do to teach them what I new that they needed to learn--

On the first day of class, I always had my students fill out a questionaire, with questions about them, their jobs, the music that they liked, how much other experience they had had with music, et al--then, I read everyone's answers, in turn, to the class, an asked them additional (and often amusing) questions--it was great fun, but it also made them feel like they were part of the group--

I used to tell them that, in order to become guitar players, they had to love to practice--and, no matter what talents that they had, if they couldn't do that, they weren't going to get anywhere--

Most people who came to me said,"I have always wanted to learn to play" or "I have had this nagging in the back of my mind for years that I really should play guitar"--I told them that even if they didn't learn to play in my class, they would find out that there wasn't really a guitar player inside them, and they could get on with their lives.

One the hardest things, for me, was to find material that was both interesting and easy to play--people are motivated to learn when the are learning material that they love, but nine times out of ten, what they love is beyond their ability to handle--I spent most of my time trying to find material--

Most important though, was that, in order to teach anybody anything, I, as the teacher, had to know clearly what I wanted them to do, and I had to have clearly planned out how I was going to get them to do it--

Anyway, Rick, you are right to have your snotty reactions--business be damned--I worked for many years in marketing and know that that sort of cut and dried, by the book attitude is a detriment to running a successul business--

Anyway I miss teaching, I had to give it up, as I had to give up my performing, because of some serious health problems--I found that teaching required that I listen to music more that I analyzed more and that I thought more about what I was doing, as a musician--