Bruce, I find most of the students who come to me basically want to be able to play songs with their friends and family, or for themselves. Or they want to be able to break out a guitar at a campfire. So I have always focussed on learning songs and how to accompany songs effectively.

I always tell students when they are beginning, you don't have to be able to do much to successfully accompany a song. You need to be able to:

1) make the chords
2) strum in rhythm
3) change the chords at the right time, while keeping the rhythm

If you can do those three things, you can accompany a song. The rest of what you learn on the guitar adds variety and interest, can underscore meaning, make things sound beautiful, etc. but you don't NEED to do those things in most cases. That helps students gain confidence that they can do it and allows them to focus on the basics at the beginning. Of course with 99% of students you quickly move past that stage, but it's a good starting place.