First several post already seem infused with the "Glider pilots are inherently superior to powered airplane pilots" hubris that is unfortunately both disappointing and IMO largely unwarranted.
Agreed, something I said I would like to avoid in my original post.
Second glider instructors are held near the top of the glider community in terms of status. Powered flying however is the exact opposite.
I've never considered that. Very good point. You can be lucky with powered instructors though; I was. They were/are all retired military instructors, indeed some of them were instructors of instructors. My 'other' club has an instructor who looks about fourteen years old (I think he's nineteen). I'm sure he's very good, he's obviously competent enough to pass the FI course but I can't help but think, maybe wrongly I don't know, that having a crusty old Sqdn Ldr with a squillion hours on fast jets and another squillion hours at one of the worlds top flying training establishments is a better bet.