That's not what the rule of primacy says at all. What it says is that what someone learns first they recall most easily. That's why in a teaching situation you deliver the most important information first, which in the case of mask clearing *certainly* has to be to exhale through the nose. If you tell them that anything else is more important during mask clearing than exhaling through the nose then that's probably what they'll remember best.
That's the rule of primacy.
I'm split on this issue, to be honest. The shallow pool we start in is very shallow so it forces me to introduce the mod-1 skills in a fin pivot. Almost nobody has trouble with that but if a student has lot of trouble with the mask skill I will continue to drill it on the bottom with them until they have the breathing correct. This just reduces the task loading down to one thing (exhale through the nose), which is the most important thing for them to master first. After that I'll raise the bar until they master it while swimming. In cases where they don't have trouble with it then they do it in the fin pivot the first couple of times and then never go to the bottom for it again.
To me it's about the end result. I don't generally start with demanding the end result first unless the student can do it that way without taking intermediate steps to break down the skill.
So that leaves me split. I highly value being able to do the skills "while diving" but I see the need with some students to break down skills into smaller steps and in some cases to go right to zero and take it one baby-step at a time.
So when I hear these kinds of discussions on the internet I sometimes wonder how some instructors screen their students. The OP started out by suggesting that the fin-pivot is a useless skill and yet I must start every OW course in a fin-pivot. So what do they do? Descend in water too deep to stand up in and then BAM! right into a perfect horizontal hover with a student who has never been under water before and start mask clearing?
Frankly, I don't believe it.
I have the odd student who could do that but unless I screened them out of the intro dives to only select the ones with high-potential there is no way I could adopt that as "the way" to do it. With a group of students having mixed potential this has to be the end result, not the starting point and students have to reach that end result via different ways. The way I teach, I give the student what they need in order to learn and I don't force them to learn the way I've decided to teach. That's what I find very odd about all the chest thumping on the internet about forcing students to hover right out of the gate. Some can. Some can't. So what do you do with the ones who can't? Wash them out? Refuse to train them? Put them under pressure to learn how you feel like teaching? Because chest thumping alone simply does not make a high-potential student out of everyone.
But now we're really hijacking the thread.
What I'm still curious about are the NASE standards for OW. I'm curious where they set the bar because I think there is value in raising expectations. But like Quero, all I can see from the initial blurb is what they *don't* do. I would be very interested in what they *do* do.
R..
). If the student gets into the "fin pivot" position (i.e., body off the bottom with fin tips on the bottom), great -- likewise if the student is off the bottom, neutral in the water column, great. BUT, I just let the student pick the position AS LONG AS they are flat and horizontal.
