Ron pretty much hit on what I was hearing Peter saying. Not only is the push for wider skis questionable, it is in fact counter-productive for fairly new skiers that want to get better. Wide skis are slower to come up on edge and quicker to go back flat because of the lever arm of the distance of the edge from the fulcrum, and we all discussed that quite a bit last year (also as Ron says). Once on edge, a wider ski can be very "turny" because that is a function of sidecut and not of width.
What I hadn't thought about is the requirement that edging a wider ski also takes more speed, another component that the beginner skier isn't likely to have either because they are still on green terrain or are still very tentative on blue terrain. And I sort of understand. I can tip my slalom skis standing vertical pretty easily because they don't take a lot of edging power. Because of the width it's hard for me to tip the iM77's without getting more of my weight off center. When I'm not moving I would have to lean on my poles or against something. When moving, that same increased weight transfer requires more speed to generate the centripetal force to hold me in place. And for the beginner who is probably just leaning into the turn instead of angulating, they need to get even farther inside the turn to move the center of mass the same amount as someone like Ron who angulates until the bumper feelers hit the snow.
I just thought Peter's statement was very insightful.
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