The Denver chapter of the Colorado Mountain Club used to (and may still) have "practice climbs": all climbers were belayed from the top of the pitch. A fellow I met at one of these said that he considered that he hadn't learned anything if he didn't fall three times in the course of the day. I would probably never have been a good rock climber in any case; but had I understood and embraced that approach, I might have been a better bad one.
