I feel obligated to defend myself here in case I was included in "everyone."
I am one of those A554)les who never took a side mount class. I've had guidance by others who were side mount trained by "experts". My initial "training" was from an instructed, instructor but not a side mount instructor himself. I've dived with mentors who I can only call experts. I've been critiqued by a recognized "expert" who shall remain nameless but I guarantee all of you using side mount know who he is.
The only pics of me on this thread were preemptively acknowledged as my best guess on the first dive without doing pool work first. I like to pretend its gotten better but will post pics as soon as I get more recent ones.
If your critique is aimed at SM instructors than please disregard the following.
Not all of us learn well from "instructors" and I agree with you that many (if not all) instructors suck. IMHO the mentor / apprentice / practice route is the only way to actually learn. Unfortunately for most, diving is not like all of the other disciplines I partake in and a "class" is the only way to proceed for many. As I get more and more experienced my disdain for this model only continues to grow. Without some semblance of a mentoring role I do not take any instructor seriously; they are all in it for a paycheck. This is antithetical to my other unrelated disciplines where there are no certifying agencies (boarding, ~freediving, rockclimbing, wheeling, bmx / freestyle mtb, fabricating etc.) FWIW, I have a bunch of cards I consider meaningless from well known instructors and agencies; what I've learned has been primarily from practice with mentors.
@rddvet , I have no idea what your background is but I would encourage you to adopt more of the mentor role than the critic role. I realize you are primarily critiquing the instructors but you called it how it comes across.
I see a lot of what you see, but have deliberately been reticent.