Diving Education Today

[rstofer]

The whole point behind PDIC training is to create an active diver and not just a diver who dives a couple of times each year. That is in the PDIC instructor manual. A great example of the success of such training is that most of the GUE instructors that began with the organization were PDIC recreational divers and instructors.

This sounds like an agency, based on your stated teaching methods, that is best left on the scrap heap of history.

And GUE or DIR aren't the be-all, end-all of diving either. There are millions of divers who could care less about their training/equipment and still manage to enjoy the hobby, Heck, there are people that dive in jacket BCs and don't have a clue about frog kicks.

Richard

 

[Trace Malinowski]

This is crap!

These practices are absolutely out of the question. They are unnecessary and they are dangerous. There's a reason this type of training has been scrapped.

Kind of reminds me of the infiltration course with the M60 firing over our heads while some type of controlled exposions occured in pits around us. But that was serious; there was a war going on. You might have heard about it, it was in all the papers circa '65.

Did you know that the M60 barrel had to be replaced every 5000 rounds to keep it from sagging to the point the bullets actually got close to the recruits? And our cheap base (Fort Carson, Colo) didn't have enough money for tracers so we had no idea where the bullets were.

Anyway, I am dead set against any training program that includes any kind of harrassment. I can't believe anyone is doing this crap anymore.

Richard

Who are the experts on diver training who pronounced this type of training "unnecessary" and "dangerous"?

Imagine that, as your instructor, I tell you that, "In the following air-sharing exercise the out of air diver will be designated by the diver who realizes he or she has suffered an O-ring or burst disk failure. You're going to hear the air gun go off behind your head making this (demonstrate by blowing the gun into the water) noise. Signal your buddy that you are out of air and then perform your sharing air ascent as you normally would. The only difference is that I'm going to keep air-gunning as you swim to the surface to create the noise that you will be hearing behind you if it happened for real. That way, if it does happen, you will be able to stay calm and be less confused and nervous about what you will be hearing? Is everyone comfortable with that? Does anyone have any questions? Once underwater, if you don't like it or you want me to stop, signal, "Stop," rather than "Hold" and I'll know you are addressing me and not your buddy. At that point, I'll discontinue the exercise."

Yeah, I can see how that is crap and frowned upon while playing with underwater rocketship-like toys is especially helpful. While both might be unnecessary, are they helpful?

So, you were being trained for war where people die? I'm glad nothing like that ever happens in scuba diving.

Besides, it sounds like the way the military exercise conducted was done by inept instructors with little thought to recruit safety. What if rather than shoot live rounds over you, they used blank cartridges and kept explosives far away just to simulate the sounds of war? However, I bet that conducting such an exercise safely allows a soldier to ease his way into combat by first coming to grips with the fact that live rounds are going over him and not just downfield from his own rifle. It must be a little scary to have rounds going over your head which helps increase one's courage to having rounds come at you.

The student doesn't have an actual malfunction thrown at him or her. The student gets to experience a skill already done proficiently MORE THAN A FEW TIMES with the addition the sound and feel of bubbles.

You'd be surprised how many students find it fun to problem solve at the end of a course when such "failures" are thrown at them. It is a challenge that most every student that I had enjoys. It's a game. Why is it that throwing a rocket underwater is considered "fun" while playing "survival" is not? I've done both failures and underwater catch. Students actually enjoy the game a lot more than you'd think.

But, that's just it, have you ever taught such a course or do you just think it would be hard, dangerous and unpleasant?

Or, can't you imagine students being able to have fun and be safe doing such things with such limited training time? I don't have that problem.

 

[Thalassamania]

...The problem is not the training. The problem, to the very small extent that there is one, is divers diving outside their level of training and experience.

If that is the case, might it not be that the envelope available to divers finishing OW today is a bit to limited and that it'd be better if we lengthened the course a bit to both expand the envelope a hair and further impress on the students what the envelope is and why it should be respected?

Can you point me to where those values came from?

Glen Egstrom at UCLA, I think it was published both in one of the IQ Proceedings as well as in the Human Performance book he did with Bacharat.

This is crap!

These practices are absolutely out of the question. They are unnecessary and they are dangerous. There's a reason this type of training has been scrapped.

Kind of reminds me of the infiltration course with the M60 firing over our heads while some type of controlled exposions occured in pits around us. But that was serious; there was a war going on. You might have heard about it, it was in all the papers circa '65.

Did you know that the M60 barrel had to be replaced every 5000 rounds to keep it from sagging to the point the bullets actually got close to the recruits? And our cheap base (Fort Carson, Colo) didn't have enough money for tracers so we had no idea where the bullets were.

Anyway, I am dead set against any training program that includes any kind of harrassment. I can't believe anyone is doing this crap anymore.

Richard

I do not believe in harassment activities, but that doesn't make such exercises "crap," "unnecessary," or "dangerous." I think that there are better ways to reach the same goal, but ignoring the need to reach that goal is, IMHO, ostrich like and a primary reason for the "crappy" divers that we see today, e.g., too few repetitions of skills and too little stress performing those skills.

 

[rstofer]

I do not believe in harassment activities, but that doesn't make such exercises "crap," "unnecessary," or "dangerous." I think that there are better ways to reach the same goal, but ignoring the need to reach that goal is, IMHO, ostrich like and a primary reason for the "crappy" divers that we see today, e.g., too few repetitions of skills and too little stress performing those skills.

Getting to the same end point is not the issue. It is the methods used to get there that I deem "crap", "unnecessary" and "dangerous".

I have no objection with the goal, only the path. Neanderthal training methods were scrapped in the '60s. And this, I would venture to guess, was when the sport began getting popular. NOBODY should put up with any type of harassment. Maybe commercial and military divers should just stay out of the rec training business. This is just a hobby. Fun and games.

Even Marine DI's can't touch their recruits. Well, ok, they can help them adjust their uniforms. In the mid-60's we had an Army sergeant assault a recruit who really didn't want to be there (draftee, like me). The only way to save the sergeant from jail was to discharge the recruit. Which suited him just fine.

Richard

 

[Trace Malinowski]

This sounds like an agency, based on your stated teaching methods, that is best left on the scrap heap of history.

And GUE or DIR aren't the be-all, end-all of diving either. There are millions of divers who could care less about their training/equipment and still manage to enjoy the hobby, Heck, there are people that dive in jacket BCs and don't have a clue about frog kicks.

Richard

PDIC BASHING! PDIC BASHING!

Yes. There are also millions of divers who spent a lot of hard-earned money and time on training who don't have a clue about frog kicks.

 

[Thalassamania]

I find harassment unnecessary because I have designed exercises with enough top on them that they are self harassing and thus I never have to muck with trust that I feel needs to exist between an instructor and student ... but in the end the effect is the same and I suspect that you'd have "dangerous" problems with some of the exercises that I have students do. But those exercises have been used for almost 60 years within the Scripps Model Programs without a single incident. Before you go yelling "crap" and "dangerous" and "unnecessary" I suggest that you make your case rather than just call names.

 

[Peter Guy]

Trace, Thal, et al -- If basic dive instruction (and here I really do mean entry level) were done, and had been done, to YOUR minimum standards, as opposed to mine for example, what do you believe would be the state of the industry today? Would "scuba diving" as a [what, sport, activity, experience, ?] be wide spread and at least "experienced" by many (as it appears to be the case today) or would it be a pretty limited activity with a talented, but limited, audience (as I look at rock climbing or sky diving, although I have no idea of the numbers, just impressions).

Assuming your basic OW classes were the norm, do you believe there would be many people taking those classes? If so, would your guess be at 100% of today's level, 50%, ? Yes, this is wild-a$$-guessing -- but what does YOUR gut tell you?

And do you think the whole industry would be better off with your system? (And why?)

 

[Kingpatzer]

Most of the students that I have had at the recreational level are not just active divers, but active dive leaders with PDIC and with other agencies. Personal experience tells me there is merit in such training and such trainers.

And how man of the active divers, and dive leaders, who are members of this board would never have put on a mask at the price points and time commitments your training regiment requires?

Looking at the PDIC site, I see that more than a few states don't have a single instructor. The best I can figure it looks like the nearest person in PDIC to me would be a mere 10 hour dive away. You're not even in half of the states.

I wonder how likely me, or any of the dozens of other active divers around me would be diving today were PDIC the norm?

Your interest in only having elite divers is, in some ways, a laudable ideal. But it is also foolish elitism. There is a place in this world for truly recreational divers along with those who want to do more than just tour a reef. And more importantly, there is a need to be able to have a sustainable business model that can put diver training out there where the divers are.

If PDIC is the cat's meow as you seem to think it is, why is there no PDIC instructor in someplace like Duluth -- where there are some great dives to be had? My guess is that PDIC either can't train the instructors to be there, or that there is no way to have a sustainable business in a community where 6 figure incomes aren't common given the cost considerations of multiple-week courses.

Why not just require everyone be fully cave instructor certified so we can make sure they're really safe? And those who can't commit the years and thousands of dollars are people we'd just really be better off without, right? That is after all the same logic. Superior training is better, and costs and time are meaningless considerations to the reality of needing the best training.

Are divers really different?

Yes. People are starting diving today in a world where there are a much greater number of possible recreational activities available to the average middle-income person than decades of yore. The divers of today are aware of those possibilities and are therefore not as interested in making as heavy a commitment to any particular activity before they are convinced they want to pursue that activity in more depth. That comes with the act of engagement.

Moreover, because of the range of available activities the average diver today is not looking to dive even dozens of times in a year. They are looking to dive for a few days over a vacation every year or so.

I wonder, are we alienating those people who would be active divers, by trying to sell the sport to those who "try" rather than those who "do"?

Many of those who try, find out they are interested in doing. And they would not try if they had to invest weeks before they're even let into the water. Which is what at least one person here was touting as the grand old glory days.

 

[rstofer]

I don't care what techniques are taught. If they are useful, teach them. People will decide for themselves which program to take. But if it involves an instructor or another diver touching the student or their equipment, it is not only harassment, it is assault.

After 330+ posts, it finally comes out. What we're really talking about is reverting to the model of the '50s. "Just ring the bell and you can go home!" That model almost guaranteed long lasting divers. Every student who had a lick of sense just rang the bell and went home. The world market for regulators was probably in the few hundreds. There was no market. No resorts, no charter boats, nothing!

Get over it! Those days are gone. Nobody wants to put up with crap to learn to dive. They get enough of that at work. They certainly don't want it for a hobby. And that's all diving is: a hobby among many hobbies.

Maybe that's what PADI understands and maybe that's why they are the largest training organization in the world! Teach enough to make the diver capable of diving in the environment for which they were trained, within the limits of their training and with a buddy of similar training. But make it FUN! Harassment isn't fun.

Richard

 

[InTheDrink]

Erm, I for one would disagree. I think harassment could play a really good part of training. It's essentially just another loaded task. Anything going wrong is a problem. Harassment is just another problem to deal with. And as we all know they happen in clusters.

From reading Trace's posts I'd LOVE to do a PDIC course!

Course, I'm not suggesting it's everyone's cup of tea. And I do think that the basic PADI course content, if enough time was allocated to it - which it definitely is not - would turn out fine very basic OW divers. As it is, it takes another 50 dives min to get to be proficient at basic OW. IMO.

And the reason I have a problem with PADI standards, or generally lower standards, is that it is simply unfair in that you are placing the newly certified student purely into the hands of lady luck. As long as everything is fine, then fine. But if it goes south when you're just minted then you're tossing the coin. That seems a pretty unfair deal.

Of course, driving to the dive site will pretty much always be the riskier activity and I guess we all accept that.

J