Years ago, while I was teaching educational processes, I came up with a concept I called the Reduction Funnel, which I believe works in almost all avenues of life. The basic idea is that someone or some group does a lot of thinking and research leading to a concept that they expect will provide a serious benefit in their line of work. It is necessarily complex, and they have thought out all the different possibilities and contingencies. They publish the concept, producing well-designed explanations.
Soon some key people in an organization leadership buy into the system and formally adopt it. They send a group off for training, and those people take a thorough course and get thorough training materials. They return to the organization with the task of training the next level of trainers. Knowing people will not have time for the training they had, they shorten the training time considerably, and they produce new, condensed training materials. The people they train that way then go out and train others in even shorter sessions with even more condensed training materials. Before you know it, the original complex, well thought out program has been reduced to a few shoutable slogans and examples that in no way represent the original and which may even prohibit the perfectly acceptable options that were present in the original design but were not included in the condensed training materials.
I first thought about this when I joined a school district as a English teacher and had to teach their system for essay writing, a highly rigid, formulaic system that had almost nothing to do with good writing as I had learned it. All essays through 12th grade had to be written according to this formula, even when that system was totally wrong for the topic. I asked everyone why, and I was told that was the way it had to be done. I was referred to the original program, contained in large, dust covered volumes that had clearly not been opened in years. I read through it, and saw the problem. The original system was not rigid. It was not formulaic. It had some principles that made sense, and it had a lot of options for choosing the right approach for the right topic.
But in that first section, it made a key strategical error. It showed ONE example of how this approach could be used in ONE kind of writing. I recognized the example: it was the ONE that was used as a model for ALL the writing that was to be done in the school district. The idea that there were other acceptable ways to do it was entirely lost in the reduction funnel of teacher training. More importantly, the original program emphasized that the example was for a very basic writing topic, one suitable for middle school, but not for more complex writing. (The school district required it through 12th grade.)
So what has this got to do with the rule of thirds in diving?
After much accurate criticism over many years for a lack of appropriate emphasis on gas planning in the OW course, PADI added a decent gas planning section to their OW course. I was one of the people who leveled that criticism, especially in a discussion with PADI headquarters while I was getting a Distinctive Specialty on dive planning approved. My course included planning options such as all usable, the rule of halves, and the rule of thirds and talked about when each would be appropriate. In those discussions, the representative from PADI headquarters who eventually approved my course mentioned that while all of those were valid gas planning strategies, the rule of thirds would not be used all that often in recreational diving.
When PADI added gas planning to the OW course, they put a question about it on the final exam. For some reason, they used the rule of thirds as the planning strategy that the divers were using in the question. There is nothing wrong with the question, and the way the students are supposed to calculate the turning point for the dive is correct if you are using the rule of thirds. Unfortunately, it is the only question of that type on the exam.
I am afraid of what is going to happen. Wanting to be sure students get the question right on the exam, instructors will emphasize the rule of thirds. As a result, we will reach the point that all recreational diving is supposed to follow the rule of thirds, just as the school district in which I worked decided that all essays had to follow the only model they saw in their training. I am beginning to sense that it is inevitable.
In the last couple months, I have seen several comments in ScubaBoard that indicated that the rule of thirds is something that must be followed on all dives, and I fear that it won't be long before that becomes a hard and fast law that cannot be violated. People who talk about other ways to plan a dive will be ridiculed for being unsafe.
Soon some key people in an organization leadership buy into the system and formally adopt it. They send a group off for training, and those people take a thorough course and get thorough training materials. They return to the organization with the task of training the next level of trainers. Knowing people will not have time for the training they had, they shorten the training time considerably, and they produce new, condensed training materials. The people they train that way then go out and train others in even shorter sessions with even more condensed training materials. Before you know it, the original complex, well thought out program has been reduced to a few shoutable slogans and examples that in no way represent the original and which may even prohibit the perfectly acceptable options that were present in the original design but were not included in the condensed training materials.
I first thought about this when I joined a school district as a English teacher and had to teach their system for essay writing, a highly rigid, formulaic system that had almost nothing to do with good writing as I had learned it. All essays through 12th grade had to be written according to this formula, even when that system was totally wrong for the topic. I asked everyone why, and I was told that was the way it had to be done. I was referred to the original program, contained in large, dust covered volumes that had clearly not been opened in years. I read through it, and saw the problem. The original system was not rigid. It was not formulaic. It had some principles that made sense, and it had a lot of options for choosing the right approach for the right topic.
But in that first section, it made a key strategical error. It showed ONE example of how this approach could be used in ONE kind of writing. I recognized the example: it was the ONE that was used as a model for ALL the writing that was to be done in the school district. The idea that there were other acceptable ways to do it was entirely lost in the reduction funnel of teacher training. More importantly, the original program emphasized that the example was for a very basic writing topic, one suitable for middle school, but not for more complex writing. (The school district required it through 12th grade.)
So what has this got to do with the rule of thirds in diving?
After much accurate criticism over many years for a lack of appropriate emphasis on gas planning in the OW course, PADI added a decent gas planning section to their OW course. I was one of the people who leveled that criticism, especially in a discussion with PADI headquarters while I was getting a Distinctive Specialty on dive planning approved. My course included planning options such as all usable, the rule of halves, and the rule of thirds and talked about when each would be appropriate. In those discussions, the representative from PADI headquarters who eventually approved my course mentioned that while all of those were valid gas planning strategies, the rule of thirds would not be used all that often in recreational diving.
When PADI added gas planning to the OW course, they put a question about it on the final exam. For some reason, they used the rule of thirds as the planning strategy that the divers were using in the question. There is nothing wrong with the question, and the way the students are supposed to calculate the turning point for the dive is correct if you are using the rule of thirds. Unfortunately, it is the only question of that type on the exam.
I am afraid of what is going to happen. Wanting to be sure students get the question right on the exam, instructors will emphasize the rule of thirds. As a result, we will reach the point that all recreational diving is supposed to follow the rule of thirds, just as the school district in which I worked decided that all essays had to follow the only model they saw in their training. I am beginning to sense that it is inevitable.
In the last couple months, I have seen several comments in ScubaBoard that indicated that the rule of thirds is something that must be followed on all dives, and I fear that it won't be long before that becomes a hard and fast law that cannot be violated. People who talk about other ways to plan a dive will be ridiculed for being unsafe.
