Is a 45 year old student pilot considered 'youth'?

What are the issues that keep soaring from training and retaining 'older youth'?

There's a lot of talk about recruiting 'youth' into soaring. Does RAS/SSA put 45+ y.o. students in the youth category? Who exactly are we trying to recruit?

Today's 45+ y.o.s are the ones who will be flying steadily for the next 25 years, say until 2038. Most of today's 20 year old pilots will quit flying by 30 (if not 25) due to money and the distractions of career, mortgage, and family. Some of them will start to fly again around 2038, when I'm worn out.

The issues:

1)Older youth are slower learners, so it is hard for a middle age pilot to get enough training and progress at an acceptable pace in the current system. It took me way too many seasons to get my rating. I saw a lot of other middle age students get discouraged and give up. Combination of bad weather, shortage of CFI-Gs, haphazard training, and my slow learning. It's highly improbable that I would persist to this point.

2)This is related to #1. The slow learning of older students puts a burden on volunteer CFI-Gs. The CFI-G gets tired of teaching that slower learner, the student picks up on that subliminally and quits. It is just taking too long and that CFI-G is understandably cranky about it. Worse case, the CFIG pushes the student to take the flight test before the student is really ready (and they pass). Getting the rating does not make you a good and safe pilot.

3)The shortage of modern club gliders. Okay. So I have my rating. Now how do I get my Silver Badge? Fortunate for me, I found a club that has a PW-6 and I can do some XC tandem flights with some expert older XC pilots, and being advanced in years, they like to have a backup pilot in the cockpit. It's fun. WIN WIN. And I have a decent glider to solo. The appeal of doing XC training in a 2-33 is absolute ZERO. Too uncomfortable. No 2-place modern club gliders? Time to quit and take up sailing.

Action Items:

1)Shorten the duration of the training period for middle age students. Train smarter. Be more systematic. Based on my student experience, glider training is haphazard. The reluctance of CFI-G to exploit Condor to speed up the initial phase of training baffles me. Old dogs, new trick maybe. I guess Condor is not so much fun for the CFI-G. So let's train CFI-Gs to use Condor as a tool. You can start to train on Condor in January and students will have a leg up once the snow melts.

2)Invest in more 2-place modern gliders. Most glider pilots have capital (or they would have taken up bird watching instead). If half of them would sign $2-3000 promissory notes, we could update the training fleet tomorrow. I mean... what do you earn on your CDs? .2%? My glider club pays me 3% on the promissory note that I signed and that helps finance our new glider, AND I get to fly a nice new glider! Huge ROI. Stop flapping the jaws and step up gentlemen! Clubs did this back in the day and bought the 2-33 fleet. Inflation adjusted, it is the same money. Why are the purse strings held tighter today? New Butterfly Vario or Promissory Note? Your choice.

Bonus Step:
Start launching with a winch. That will pull in, train and retain the 'young Youth' pilots. It will probably shorten the calendar duration of everyone's training because more flights will get launched on Saturday afternoon.