The point of hang gliding instruction is to keep you from hurting
yourself launching and landing. It is about teaching the skills of launching and
landing, because it is near the ground that you are most likely to hurt
yourself. If you can learn those skills you have the most chance of progressing
and staying in the sport.

To learn these skills you must have plenty of practice launching and landing
correctly. You are teaching your brain (rewiring it) to automatically perform
the functions that you won't have time to consciously perform when you are
launching and landing. You'll start off being way too slow to do the right
thing. You'll start off forgetting (because you don't have the mental space and
time) to do what your teacher told you to do, so you'll be put in a situation
where it is safe and doesn't matter so much that you are clumsy and
inexperienced.

Your instructor will hold you back and make you work on what you haven't
mastered. You will need to continually practice the correct procedures in order
to rewire your brain to get it to automatically perform them. This is where
scooter towing (low and slow) is a huge benefit. You get a lot of practice, time
after time, both launch and landing. Getting the glider set to the correct angle
for launch, flaring when the glider comes to trim, holding the control frame in
to come into ground effect with sufficient speed, etc. It is the over and over
again practice that no other method allows that makes scooter towing vastly
superior as a training method.

And this is where our current instruction is so dismally lacking. You only have
to look at the landing techniques exhibited by most competition pilots to
understand that they (all of us) zipped through instruction without nearly
enough practice landing. The pilots come in too slow, their hands are too high
on the down tubes, they transition way too high, they nose their gliders in
because they have the wrong technique.

Of course, scooter towing isn't a perfect instrument for teaching how to launch
off a hill side, because the correct angle of the glider for launching on a hill
side will be the same but now with respect to the slope as opposed to the flat
ground. So there is some adjustment to be made and students benefit a lot from
launching repeatedly from small hills to learn the correct procedures.

Once students can launch and land with sufficient skill, learning to set up an
approach (which involves turning and therefore flying) is the next skill set
that needs to be practiced. Fortunately this will also provide additional
practice with launching and landing. Learning these skills is great fun because
frankly launching and landing (and setting up an approach) are the most
thrilling (exciting) aspects of hang gliding. Once students have experienced the
thrill of getting off the ground, just a little bit, the core thrill of flying,
it is these experiences that really bring the rewards and make training such an
enjoyable experience. It's not like school, it's like learning to walk, and
instructors should approach it that way.

You'll notice that instruction tapers off or stops altogether once students get
their first couple of high flights, at least in most locations, and after that
they are essentially thrown to the wolves (their fellow, more advanced, pilots).
Maybe there is some mentoring going on. Or, if they are flying at Blue Sky, the
coach will be there to help them transition to more flying than launching and
landing.

As we think about instruction and how to improve and expand it in the future we
should think about what it is we are actually teaching and what are the most
effective methods of providing that instruction.