Tonguing. Just Do It!

I apologize ahead of time if this post comes across as more than mildly frustrated...

I'm finding more and more that there are far too many high school horn players that have no idea how to articulate anything other than a slur. They use a "huh" attack on anything that does not have a slur marked on it, and they think that this is correct.  Some of them are even proud of their so-called ability to articulate in this manner.  Are they really not taught how to tongue properly before they reach their high school years?  Being married to a band director places me in a position where I am fully aware that we absolutely cannot hold band and orchestra directors solely responsible for this problem.  When you have 70+ students all playing different instruments at the same time, it's impossible to correct every single technique issue that may arise with your students.  If the student doesn't make it glaringly obvious in rehearsal, they can glide through 4 years of high school and their teacher could never know there was a problem.  There comes a point where you have to trust that your students are retaining at least some of the information that you try to impart to them each day.  That being said, there is a distinct difference between knowing how to tongue and choosing to not do so properly (i.e. laziness) and actually not knowing how to tongue.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have always been under the impression that tonguing is one of the most basic skills that is required of wind instrumentalists (brass and woodwind alike).  Air, buzz, tongue.  Our primary tools.  Whilst on my eternal mission to get my students to practice their fundamentals, I have been compiling the following mental list of ways to help them articulate:

-  Say "tah" into the horn while you play (I know, "Thank you Captain Obvious." Right?  I'm surprised just how many students cannot do this.)
-  Play a whole note.  Follow it with 4 straight quarter notes using the same air stream as the whole note.  Simply interrupt the whole note with the tongue to create the quarter notes.
-  Pretend to spit out watermelon/pumpkin/sunflower seeds.  Actually spit out watermelon/pumpkin/sunflower seeds.  Apply the same technique to playing.

-  Pick a pitch.  Play it as short as humanly possible at a loud dynamic.  Keeping the note short makes it nearly impossible to start the pitch without the tongue in addition to not allowing time for pitch manipulation.  This can help with pitch accuracy as well if you move around to different pitches.
-  Do the same thing but as softly as possible.
-  Tell them to spit tacks.
-  Don't let them do anything aside from articulation exercises in their lessons for weeks.  They'll do anything to move on to something new.

My request, as a friendly neighborhood private instructor, is that we don't allow our students to "get by" with lazy or lousy tongue technique.  It is a fairly simple concept that can be taught when they are young.  The older your students get, the harder it is to unlearn bad habits.  Especially if they are not often corrected on it.  Demonstrate proper tonguing often and bring it to your students' attention. Emulation is one of my favorite teaching tools with my younger students.  They don't need to think about how to do something.  They can copy anything you do if they just know what they are listening for.