I didn't use C-style string functions for the longest time. If I had a char*, perhaps because I got it from some C library we were using, I would turn it into a std::string and use it's functions and operators. One day, I realized how silly that was: I'm sure I was causing gratuitous memory allocations (not all strings qualify for the short string optimization).

Perhaps part of my hangup is the expectation that you would teach the difference between, say, enum and enum class. There are good reasons to use enum, and I believe there always will be. There are good reasons to use pointers (in fact, one of the main reasons I use pointers is to point to the payload of a std::unique_ptr, and I use std::unique_ptr when I have an obvious owner, even if I might need other functions to access the payload while the owner is still around).

So I don't think that it's possible to ignore "the old ways" completely.