I wouldn't attend a school that didn't have so elementary a piece of hardware in the lab. These are essential for any sort of RF work, where even the 3-5 pf of capacitance is of concern.

Newbies smart enough to build in a FET buffer as you've suggested will never encounter this problem. Note that there are more components in the FET buffer than in the entire rest of a typical newbie application circuit.

My take on the situation is that, if his oscillator is not working he has (a) a defective MCU, (b) the wrong passive components (capacitors), (c) a defective crystal, or (d) an improperly wired circuit. Would a person likely to have any or all of these faults in his circuit be able to add an otherwise unnecessary buffer without worsening the situation?

Ordinarily, one hooks up the crystal and cap's, attaches Vcc and GND, and, once switched on, the oscillator oscillates. After all, the oscillator is just a CMOS inverter with a 10 Megohm resistor in feedback. It's the crystal and cap's that make it oscillate.

The problem is that beginners don't know how and where to get the "right" components, and they don't know how to go about wiring them up. They don't know about the importance of proper power supply bypass at the Vcc and GND connections, and they don't understand the importance of keeping wires short and connections clean. All of these are learned, and, generally, not from a textbook. It's hard experience that's the teacher. That's why I advocate using an 8032 rather than a part with internal memory. It's not because it's easier, but be cause it teaches valuable practices and procedures, not to mention better understanding of what's going on.

RE