You gotta wonder why the Wrights spent so much time optimizing an airfoil. You could have been there to tell them to use a barn door wing and flat plate prop to save them a lot of time.
I have noticed this "it works or it doesn't work. Everything else is nuances." binary thinking among SWEs. It's odd.
Don't get me wrong -- for practical flight it is really important to expand the reasonable range of angles of attack because angle of attack is one of very few ways one has of controlling the aircraft.
But for explaining how lift appears, it is an irrelevant detail.
The purpose of modeling is not to mimick reality at high fidelity but to focus attention on the o
parameters that matter for a specific situation. When you change the situation (going from explaining how lift happens to trying to fly) it is not surprising to have to switch to a different model.
I have noticed this "it works or it doesn't work. Everything else is nuances." binary thinking among SWEs. It's odd.