The private instructor quickly found the problem, sounds like on day one in the story.

You're taught that if you have a teacher that teaches that. Based on how disposable so many things in this world have become, I don't think there's a strong self-maintenance and repair culture underlying everything. It seems to be more of a skill picked up or pushed by individuals who have learned how useful it is to know how to maintain and fix things. I played trombone, saxophone, and percussion through school and can't think of any maintenance related things that were taught to me beyond occasionally opening the spit valve to let some moisture out, that reeds needed occasional replacement, and to not damage them.

Class was mostly about just playing the music or music theory. Though in high school, I believe my music teacher would have been able to help with issues that were ultimately maintenance issues, but in grade school we didn't even have a dedicated music teacher, just one of the normal teachers had fingering charts for the instruments we had and some music we could play.