theduckguru
Contributor
You have all written very eloquent and intelligent comments about the need for scuba instructors or rather the fact that we are not needed. I think Scubaboard has become a free for all video game where anybody can just log in, propound any opinion they like, without having to sustain it or without having the knowledge behind those opinions.
The favorite games on Scubaboard are:
1. PADI Bashing.
2. Insult the full time diving instructor.
3. Assume that anybody who is involved in scuba diving on a relatively full time basis is an illiterate, uneducated hobo without any other experience.
4. Pretend to be a world class diver and international dive guru when the writer has only logged about 40 dives.
So let me answer the question again, “Are instructors necessary?”
This is a perfectly reasonable, intelligent, moderate and well thought out OP which has brought about a number of very interesting opinions.
Since my last post on the thread here are some of the latest gems:
So on a thread discussing “Are Instructors necessary” I am attacked for making my comments as an instructor. Because I happen to have bothered to go out and get my instructor certification and I take my work seriously, I am on a self important soapbox. If I maintain an opinion contrary to the majority, I’m polarized. If I have the ability to dissect the argument of someone whose opinion in this particular instance I don’t agree with I have the perfect answer to any argument.
The same person then says in their next post but doesn’t actually reach a cut and dried conclusion because the answer may conflict with their previous post.
You then go on to say: Here is a clear argument in favor of professional instruction versus mentoring. When you turn your pastime into a profession you can suffer burnout. Professionals don’t suffer burnout. If they do, it never was their profession, it was their dream and when they became faced with the realities of the job they threw in the towel. A professional scuba instructor doesn’t say I don’t feel like it today. Unless we are really sick (subject for another thread?) we go and we do our job. We do that job because it’s the one we have, because people have limited time and they want a standard syllabus that prepares them for diving. The merits and demerits of whether that syllabus is adequate or not are beyond the scope of this particular thread and are being ever discussed on others almost permanently).
Someone for whom I have great respect then goes on to say:
…………..
Yes, it is a separate thread so why are you inserting here? (I happen to agree with what you are saying, but it’s an argument for improving instructor qualification and education, not to support the eradication of instructors).
I know you are not deriding me personally. I admit to having been slightly on edge when there is a mob (I’m not referring to you) making a case for having me blown out of the water to be replaced with amigos who do some diving.
I perfectly understand this and agree with it! Again, it is a case for demanding better instructors and instructional systems, not for eliminating us.
We agree. Sweeping generalizations are all too rife on the Board. Just for the record, not all mentors are GOOD and not all certified instructors are IDIOTS. It definitely needs to be taken on a person by person basis.
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Right.
I’m hurting financially more than I have in my whole life. So logically, I defend LESS INSTRUCTORS, BETTER INSTRUCTION, ONGOING EDUCATION AND TRAINING, MARKETING MORE THOROUGH, REALISTIC, SAFE AND ENJOYABLE COURSES TO THE PUBLIC, CLOSING DOWN CHARTERS AND LDS THAT ARE UNSAFE, HIGHER QUALITY CONTROL. My example on your take Thal is that it costs about $2000 to do a USPA AFF skydiving course. Something, somewhere is very wrong.
I think all PROs strive to push amateurs and mentors out of the picture. Kind of goes with the terrain. First time I’ve ever been referred to as a Johnny Come Lately!
You also have to be an EFR or similar instructor to do a Rescue Course and the student has to get an EFR rating or similar to complete the course.
The OP says: Again, this is an argument for better instructors, classes and courses, not for doing away with them.
Thank you, that is one of key points supporting my argument that Instructors ARE necessary.
With all due respect this simply isn’t true. I can take six months or even a year to teach someone. I don’t put the time frame on the class, the student does. So if a student has more time they would probably (case by case would have to be studied) still be better serviced by me than a non professional mentor. I think you are referring to the time restrictions frequent at LDS. That’s another thread 
Agreed.
I would say that’s a very spurious argument and you would have to support it.
I think you are mixing and matching here. As I posted previously you don’t have to be God’s gift to scuba diving many to be a decent instructor. Most of those superdivers you mention (I know literally hundreds of them) are lousy instructors for one reason or another (impatience, intolerance, lack of humility, etc). Occasionally there is a superdiver who’s also a good instructor. You’re unlikely to find him/her teaching OWD.
Logical or do you expect us to propose that we should be liquidated? Every other profession does it, why wouldn’t we? you obviously are not an instructor otherwise you wouldn’t refer to us as having an “elite position”. It’s a laughable non sequitor In my case, all of a very small one. John 11:35 Indoctrinated by the industry that spawned me? That’s pretty sick.
That’s really far out! You pay for training. If you successfully complete that training you get the relevant certification. If you don’t successfully undertake the course, you don’t get certified. Extortion? Has it ever occurred to you that the LDS has no way of knowing if you know anything at all about diving unless they see a card? There is nothing stopping anyone from doing this. But to call certification “blackmail” is outrageous and libelous.
I don’t believe you. I don’t believe this either. You don’t say…
How cynical and how sad. But you say you have no axe to grind and some of your closest friends are instructors….
You know very little about the dive industry (profits? Margins? Where?) and even less about government which is the biggest money making scam known to man. It takes money from everybody and everything to then go and use it in a frequently irresponsible way while paying literally hundreds of thousands of totally functionless bureaucratic jobs while furthering the egos of government workers and politicians alike.
No offense taken Aren’t you contradicting yourself once again?
WOW! I hope some apologize for tugging on supermans cape.
Once upon a time a couple of bicycle builders not only learned how to fly, an activity much more difficult to learn than scuba, they invented the plane they learned in. Neither of the brothers had would be considered highly educated for their time or today. Surprisingly, the first aviation injury was not from a crash by the non trained pilots, it was from the mechanical failure of a propeller while the plane was firmly sitting on the ground.
I taxi an airplane to the fuel pump and nobody asks to see my pilots license because everyone believes I know what I am doing.
At the dive shop, I have to produce a non-governmentally issued certification card to buy air because no one believes you know what you are doing?
I wonder why the guy selling avgas doesn't worry about unlicensed people flying with his fuel in the tanks as much as the dive shop does about uncertified divers diving with their air in the tanks?
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