Tough story. Clearly something's gone wrong here. At 60 you aren't going to learn as somebody in their teens or twenties, but 60hrs to solo clearly indicates a problem.
I'm British, but have flown with a bunch of American schools and hold US licences, so can relate somewhat to the differences that go on in America, or anywhere else. Approaches and standards can vary a lot between instructors and schools, and the sheer size of the USA, means that things vary quite a lot.
Firstly there's something of a disconnect between theory and practice in flying: you need to learn and pass the written, but the practicalities are much more important and often have quite different emphasis (not contradictions, just emphasis). Secondly, there isn't a single best way to do things - what you're clearly seeing here is two extremes, and I recognise both of them. The young fellow is doing things "by the book" he learned at his aviation university; the older fellow is doing things in a more practiced and intuitive way that relies upon following a situation and the aeroplane. Both approaches have merit - personally I'm closer to the young chap (despite being closer in age to the older chap) but I've flown with some fantastically capable pilots who followed the intuitive approach.
What I think that you do need to accept in any flying environment, is that having arrived in that place - you must do it their way. Observe it, learn it. Also for each lesson - prepare. Airborne checks, or flow drills - learn them. There will be a recommended book for each school - the last school I flew with in the USA favoured the ASA guides, although left to my own devices I like Rod Machado's online material better, and in reality I used a combination of them - learn the lessons before turning up. This lack of preparation in my experience as an instructor is students' consistent biggest failing.
Another thing can be consistency and time of day. I find that students who leave it more than a week between lessons often forget much of what they learned and basically fail to move forwards, and everybody learns better in the morning than the afternoon.
So, for what it's worth:-
- Book 2 lessons a week, ideally in the mornings.
- Do things EXACTLY as your instructor does it. By all means ask for explanations, but don't contradict them.
- Make sure you've read everything available to prepare for each lesson
- Don't try to manage your own training progress, it's what a CFI is trained to do.
I'd also say, step away from the PC based flight sim. They're pretty good for practicing stuff you already know how to do, but people who start on the sim and teach themselves very often teach themselves very poor habits that take longer to train-out than if they'd never been near the sim in the first place.
G