Gun, give them the theory and if they understand it get them up and teach them to fly it. Come to think of it, questions about V-n diagrams would be good for initial interviews.
Framer, we are; change happens through legislation or market forces such as insurance premiums (or 'leadership', although in GA that is term is irrelevant). Your suggested informal approach happens all the time but illustrates my point - it partly fills the training gap that exists within the company between the induction checkout and the realities of line ops 100'sNm away in the bush. But getting pissed is fun, and there's babes.
Bear, the paradigm shift ? We're almost 1/5 of the way into the 21st century, and the modern 300 hour CPL wasn't trained by some hard old dog with 9000 hours on iced up DC3's, one sunk U-Boat, and 3 ex-wives, so they never got taught how to look for and pick up every dirty rat-cunning little trick to add to their bag of luck.
Your Wx courses sound good, but you need to convince the insurance companies and CASA to make them a requirement and the best way I suggest is via a beefed up and actually enforced CAR219, because the consequent flying program automatically captures the enroute Wx aspects. When I was a bosspella-pailote I rigorously taught and documented CAR219 route and strip training, and guess what - even our FOI didn't know what it was. I'd suggest that neither ATSB or CASA will even mention 219 and its underlying Act head of power (CAA28B-something) in relation to this prang, and if you try and push it you'll encounter 'the limits to what is practical'.
Duck, yes it would be a good business if the rent was negotiated to a practical number, since there are a lot more people working at YPDN than in the 90's.