Paedagogical natives?

Henry Sweet, the man who ‘taught phonetics to Europe’, in his pedagogical work made a clear point in favour of the non-native teacher. For teaching Germans English, he believed, a phonetically trained German was far superior to an untrainded Englishman, the latter being unable to communicate his knowledge. This, of course, applied equally to the teaching of foreign languages in England. (Howatt, A.P.R.: A History of English Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984: 182-3)