First of all, your model is unimaginative and a gross exaggeration, youre making the assumption that the only way to use the extra time and expend the extra effort is in some kind of military undertaking, which is so far from the truth that it is laughable. You have no idea what any of us do, you have no idea what any of our product is like, it would serve you well to look into that before you continue much further.
Actually, all that you can say is that you do not want what you perceive to be crap, but which you actually know nothing about. There are many people who pay people like me, DCBC and Trace way more money to learn how to dive than they would pay conventional, run-of-the-mill instructors, do you think that theyre all fools, or perhaps do they know something that youve yet to come to understand?
Again, I do not harass, but for different reasons than your objections raise. I suspect that Traces students enjoy the harassment, its part of doing the thing well and they take pride in that.
Actually, I have read your training syllabus and I regard it highly. I never have a problem with longer training or more training. When I look at the old NAUI OW I, OW II, AOW, Rescue, I think of a 3 month program (albeit in modules) that might be a lot like what you teach. Perhaps you have more pool sessions. But the diving content seems quite similar. A lot of time on navigation and rescue. Even before the Rescue course. This from an outsider's point of view. More pool sessions would be a good thing.
But I do have a problem with the type of harassment Trace has proposed. It isn't necessary. This whole "come up behind the diver and turn off their valve" is nonsense. There are many other ways to teach this skill. If it's even necessary. How in the world could a jammed open valve turn itself off? In a recreational context now, I'm not talking about cave diving. And I'm not buying "the kelp did it!".
Yes, I realize Trace didn't actually include the description for this particular drill. As you point out, I am just imagining because even he admitted the length of the actual harassment list was much more extensive than posted.
We will disagree about the quality of Trace's program. I wouldn't come within 100 miles of it and I sure wouldn't recommend PDIC to anyone. There's only a certain demographic that will put up with that kind of thing and I'm not in it.
Fatality rates are not the only measure (or even necessarily a good measure) of the quality of training.
True but they are relevant and, to some extent, available for review although the causation is often questionable. You often promote the idea that diver retention is a good metric. I don't necessarily disagree but there just won't be as many dedicated divers as you might want. A lot of folks just want to play at diving. No real commitment, just a part time hobby.
Yet they are the ones that far outnumber the dedicated divers and they are the ones that pump money into the industry. They may not dive often or long but they are responsible for keeping the LDSs open. Now that I have fully outfitted the four of us, my purchases will probably amount to air fills for the duration. Although I have pumped more than $10k into dive gear in the past year, there comes a point where I am no longer in need of gear.
This is so, so true. For the 30 years that our models were predominant and preeminent diving was a growing a vital thing, since the new and impoverished model has firmly come into ascendancy is has be a debilitated and dying thing, except in the area of dive travel and resorts.
Maybe the hobby has reached saturation. Frankly, I am amazed that new divers even come back to Monterey. It's a beautiful place - if you like that kind of thing.
Now, south east Asia is a place worth diving. Warm water, fantastic viz, abundant sea life - what's not to like? But we can't all live in Thailand.
I dont agree, I have no real problem with the resort divers, my problem is the maintenance of the pretense, simply as a marketing ploy, that the resort diver is one-and-the-same as the local diver of some years ago, a certified diver who does not need hand-holding and supervision.
But many of these resort divers were trained and certified in local waters long before they got to the resorts. Unless their instructors lied, they were trained for the local environment.
The problem is, they may not like the local environment. I don't.
How many, once you get rid of multiple certifications, broken down by environment?
PADI posts the statistics of OW certs by region. "PADI Americas" shows 181,031 new entry level certifications in 2008. That's a lot of new divers. Sure, some of them were outside the US but even if you think that 2/3 were in the US, that's a bunch of new divers.
BTW, PADI Canada only certified 8,674 new divers.
Statistics, Graphs & History about PADI Scuba Diving Certification, Diving Instructors' Membership & Resorts
I realize that there are better ways to present the numbers. But these are the numbers I can get.
You are the only one discussing a military approach to training, I happen to agree with you that a military approach is not what anyone is looking for and I suspect that DCBC and Trace would agree, so
whats your point?
My point is that what Trace describes resembles in large measure the kinds of things the military would do. Now, I haven't taken a military dive course but I have no doubt that it includes huge helpings of harassment. Everything else in the military does. Except the firing range - how odd. I have fond memories of the firing range.
Divers do scare themselves silly, just ask any recent, newly certified local dropout, what happened? Yes the OW training was inadequate, sometimes by design, sometimes by crappy instruction, often by both.
And my reply remains the same. Encourage OW divers to
immediately extend their training by taking AOW or any of a number of diving specialties. Since the OW program really isn't long enough to produce comfortable divers in ugly waters, extend the program with additional training.
I have never had an issue with modularity. As long as all the modules are taken.
Or, take your approach, and put all the training in the class from the start. But in the end, it takes a bunch of dives to get comfortable and it is better if those dives are supervised by an instructor.
It's going to take the same number of dives and the same number of hours to produce equivalent divers. You have a head start because your college students are already in the upper 1/3 of the bell curve in any metric you choose. And they are motivated. But somebody needs to train the divers that aren't going to take your program and just want to dive for fun.
Richard
