Number one skill to bring is watermanship, the abilty to be comfortable in the water and to try to perform each of the assigned tasks to the best of your ability, without getting frustrated if things do not always ho as planned.
Question for instructors!
- Thread starter HamTrainChickenLaser
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I don't want to push this--I was mostly just adding to my continuing crusade to change the way scuba was traditionally thought, but I will comment on this specific sentence, because I have seen its equivalent many times in arguments about why instructors don't change. Let's give it a closer look in context.
The argument goes that while brand new students who have never been on scuba before can master skills in the same amount of time as they would with a traditional approach, it is far too much to expect a person who has been instructing for 40 years to have that level of ability. No way could an experienced instructor demonstrate that level of skill.
I first experimented with this instructional methodology 15 years ago, while I was working in a shop with a dozen instructors. I talked to some of them about it, and they started trying it, too. The= common surprised comment was on how easy it was. Very soon the Director of Instruction required all of them to teach that way. No problem.
Eric Sedletzky
Contributor
John, you're a one-off, well, let's say one of a dozen-off.
You are probably less than one percent of the instructors world wide in the purely recreational world that even thinks about teaching neutral buoyancy. The other eleven are probably right here on scubaboard.
I've never actually seen one in the wild. I've seen and helped many instructors over the years, many with over 35 years of teaching, PADI, NAUI, and SDI. None of them, not one taught neutral buoyancy hovering like a skydiver 12" from the bottom of the pool. Maybe they didn't get the memo?
On the knees is just how they taught back then and many people don't change. I'll bet there are more young instructors knowing about teaching neutral buoyancy than some old stuck in the past instructors, not that they are bad instructors just old teaching style . Whether the young ones actually teach NB is another thing, but I'll bet more have at least heard of it.
But interestingly, and I know you've read this story before and I will include it for the benefit of new readers.
I/we did all the pool work on the knees of course, this was in 1998. The following weekend we all met out at the ocean for our check out dives. The DM had already been out to set the float tubes and line where we would be doing our dives. The instructor told us that the sea floor was covered with urchins, so unless we wanted our knees full of urchin spines we needed to get off the bottom and hover when we did our skills. And amazingly without much thought everyone just did it! Talk about a crash course.
So why didn't he teach us that in the pool? Probably because he didn't think about it. He was trained as an instructor to do skills in the pool on the knees and that was protocol.
In that case it was "if it 'ain't broke, don't fix it."
If people would have crashed the bottom and gotten knees full of urchin spines then the training would have been broken and it would have needed fixing, but it didn't happen.
So it's possible that the training world is not making as big of a deal out of it as you are, or at least as much as you wish they would.
I secretly wish they would make a big deal out of it I really do, but in scuba I was taught to never hold my breath.
You are missing some important history. Teaching on the knees started because when teaching started you had no way to be neutrally buoyant....no BCs. You swam to stay off the bottom, and there was no reason to stay off the bottom, either. You carried extra weights with clips on them to get down and compress your wetsuit, and then left the weights at the anchor line until your ascent.
Then we got BCs, neutrality bcame possibe, but staying off the bottom was still unimportant. The mantra when teaching was "control;" you woujld fail your instructor exam if you did not have control of your class, and that meant on their knees, close by, still, so likely overweighted.
When the holy grail of not touching the bottom arose, that did not matter in a swimming pool, so confined water classes had no reason to evolve quickly.....the pace of change was set by the lifespan of the instructors...so 20-30-40 years to get the new ideas into the new instructors is about as fast as it can evolve.
I travel around the world (you do not) and see lots of classes being done, and a remarkable fraction of those are neutrally buoyant. More so in the first world than in the third world or Asia. It is coming, it is inevitable, but it is unsurprisingly slow.
Max Planck said, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." Thus goes the world.
In a webinar about neutral buoyancy instruction about 3 years ago, Mark Powell said SDI now requires all OW instructors to teach that way. I don't believe that is true, but that is what he said.
PADI does not require it, but it promotes it. It requires some skills be taught that way in instructor examinations. All the official PADI videos and pictures I ahve seen in receent years show students being taught that way.
In a thread a couple years ago, an SSI instructor said SSI now requires it. He was wrong, but they were clearly encouraging it.
The Director of Instruction of the shop where I worked about 8 years ago wanted us to use the on-the-knees methods displayed in the videos of a major instructor development center, and I rebelled against it. About a year later, that IDC changed all its videos to show the skills done while neutrally buoyant.
Eric Sedletzky
Contributor
Well we'll see when @HamTrainChickenLaser goes and does his OW.
The proof will be in the pudding.
I hope I'm wrong.
The proof will be in the pudding.
I hope I'm wrong.
The students I have taught that got the most out of the course were the ones that really came to learn.
I taught a movie stunt coordinator who was going to be shooting a movie with a few underwater scenes. Most serious student I’ve ever had. We triple reviewed the plan and contingencies for each dive. And when we found an octopus instead of the usual “Cool we saw an Octo” his comment was “That octopus made a convenient target to practice hovering next to.”
I also taught a private jet pilot. He was the student most interested in perfect trim.
The worst students know it all ahead of time. I was teaching drysuit to a tropical diver, who aspired to be a tech diver and had probably read every tech related post here on SB. He was constantly pointing out to the other students how his BP/W was superior to their BCDs. He did not listen to “the rocky beach entry is very slippery, so have your BCD inflated, mask on and reg in. Go super slow on each step”. Or perhaps did listen and just decided it didn’t apply to a superior diver like him. He promptly fell over in 2 feet of water, needed his buddy to help get his face out and lost his mask which was on his arm and now gone in the very murky water.
And even though I’m old (but a fairly new instructor) I teach neutral and in trim. Even if an instructor usually teaches on the knees you can always ask if you can try the skills neutral.
I taught a movie stunt coordinator who was going to be shooting a movie with a few underwater scenes. Most serious student I’ve ever had. We triple reviewed the plan and contingencies for each dive. And when we found an octopus instead of the usual “Cool we saw an Octo” his comment was “That octopus made a convenient target to practice hovering next to.”
I also taught a private jet pilot. He was the student most interested in perfect trim.
The worst students know it all ahead of time. I was teaching drysuit to a tropical diver, who aspired to be a tech diver and had probably read every tech related post here on SB. He was constantly pointing out to the other students how his BP/W was superior to their BCDs. He did not listen to “the rocky beach entry is very slippery, so have your BCD inflated, mask on and reg in. Go super slow on each step”. Or perhaps did listen and just decided it didn’t apply to a superior diver like him. He promptly fell over in 2 feet of water, needed his buddy to help get his face out and lost his mask which was on his arm and now gone in the very murky water.
And even though I’m old (but a fairly new instructor) I teach neutral and in trim. Even if an instructor usually teaches on the knees you can always ask if you can try the skills neutral.
have as much fun as possible !!
OP
HamTrainChickenLaser
Contributor
I don't really understand what this means- like, do you think I am making up a story about traveling to Mexico to get my OW, or are you just saying that I will fail? I mean- don't be a coward. Just come out and say what you want to say.
I believe Eric was responding to the knees/trim issue of instruction... Nothing to do with you personally, other than that you can report back how your instructor teaches.
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