Spins and spin recovery practice can be scary. In fact, some instructors will not have their students practice spins. However and in a recent post by Jason Schappert, he stated that before he puts a student up for solo, he always makes them recover from at least one spin. Why? Because if a spin were to happen when the student pilot is flying solo, he or she may panic and not know what to do (or do the wrong thing).
In fact, Jason relates the story of how he took a student pilot up for practice before his check ride and made him perform a spin. Of course the student panicked when things did not happen as anticipated but Jason walked him through the recovery procedure. This involves three simple procedures:
In addition, Jason also included this handy diagram in his post as a useful reference:
Isn't the issue that many/most planes aren't rated for spins? Or, that's what I understood when doing my PPL and complex rating, that we couldn't do practice spin recoveries because neither the Cessna 172 nor the Piper Saratoga was safe in that configuration.