That's an odd experience, I found the opposite, that the dominant opinion was very much against copying and all about drawing from life and imagination. To me, building proficiency takes a mix of drawing from life, drawing from imagination, focused doodling, and copying other artists. But my own experience growing up was 100% drawing from imagination, which i feel left me underdeveloped in a lot of areas.
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I was exaggerating a lot, the high school class emphasis on "copying" was a lot of master studies XD we did do a fair bit plein air and still life as well.
As a child I copied a lot because all my drawings from imagination sucked x_x but I still tried because copying couldn't get me drawing what I wanted and I wanted to be a comic artst so...
I became a 3d artist instead
I think no matter how much you do for how long you're always going to feel underdeveloped in areas XD