My 02 cents
How we train students for engine failures does not IMO reflect the reality of how engine failures actually occur in the real world.
Specifically:
1) Looking at the accidents statistics approximately 80 % of all engine failures are directly caused by the actions or inactions of the pilot. The best way to deal with an engine failure is to not cause the engine to fail in the first place. IMO far to little emphasis is placed on this fact in flight training. Instead students are lead to believe that engines are likely to just stop on their own.
2) A complete engine failure in an airplane that has sufficient uncontaminated fuel properly selected, with appropriate precaution taken to guard against carb icing and with the mixture control properly set, represents the least likely to happen actual real world engine failure scenario. Yet this is exactly the scenario that is represented in flight training when the instructor pulls the throttle back and tells the student "the engine just failed"
3) The "cause checks", that is the immediate drills performed after the engine fails are at best given short shrift in flight training. Typically the students mumbles his/her way through a short list so they can get on with flying the forced landing. This inculcates an unfortunate mindset of after the engine fails
it won't start so I will do forced landing. I personally know of two forced landings which wrecked the aircraft, where engine power could have been restored if appropriate immediate action drills had been completed. I make sure that on some of the forced landing exercises if the drills are properly carried out the student gets the engine back as a way to emphasize their importance.
3) For every actual total engine failure there are probably 3 partial engine failures, yet this possibility is almost never mentioned in flight training yet alone actually practiced.
4) When the engine fails the insurance company just bought the airplane. What it looks like after it comes to a stop is absolutely irrelevant, the only factor that matters is nobody gets hurt. Yet many light schools spend an inordinate amount of time on elaborate exercises to determine the "best" field.
I tell my student Close. Open and Flat are the only things that matter. A 9 Gee deceleration from 60 knots to stop takes 25 feet. You smash the aircraft in control wings level and a level pitch attitude into pretty much any patch of flat ground and everyone lives. You stall/spin trying to maneuver into that perfect field, into wind, parallel to the furrows with the right kind of animals on it etc etc and you die.