An Open Letter of Personal Perspective to the Diving Industry by NetDoc

[The Chairman]

but at the same time, there a very large number of bad instructors, and the Dive Industry wants to think it can "police itself" without any police or deterrent...

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke

If you see a dangerous instructor and don't report him, you are a part of the problem.

FWIW, I don't feel that a bad instructor is simply one that does not teach like I do. I teach a non-traditional method of trim & buoyancy first, never allowing my students to kneel before we go on to the more traditional skills. If the end result is a student with a modicum of situational awareness, trim and buoyancy then I think you're just fine. If you're abusive to your students, spend more time talking about your tales of daring do than diving and/or don't require trim and buoyancy, then I think you're doing the sport a disservice. That doesn't mean I think you're dangerous, and that's what we're talking about here. There's a huge difference between incompetent and dangerous. In fact, a competent instructor can actually be dangerous.

I've made two complaints about standards violations/safety. Both to the regional rep for Florida and asked him what should be done. One of those times, he simply shrugged his shoulders and said, "I'm glad they teach more for other agencies." No, it wasn't PADI. There's one other instructor I should have reported and didn't. It was while I was just a DM and she purposefully brought OW students into an overhead environment. Her reasoning was that they were safe enough with her. My issue was that she taught them a dangerous, dangerous precedence. I regret that to this day. None of us are perfect, not even the most vitriolic on SB. Report standards violations as you see them. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth a million. Get it to the right people and hopefully you won't be brushed off, like what happened to me. You are the eyes and ears for the agencies. Think of it as Scuba Crime Watchers. If you don't, please stop bitching about what the agencies aren't doing. As far as I can tell none of them are pro-active. They all rely on incident reporting. They all rely on you.

 

[clint@uniquescuba.com]

The only time I know of that you were moderated when you tried to crap on people in this thread was when you posted potentially embarrassing information from the private lives of individuals participating in this thread, information that does not have anything whatsoever to do with the topic of this thread or even scuba in general. When has anyone similarly "crapped" on you? Every comment I see that opposes your statements refers to the factual content of your statements. If someone has made a derogatory reference to your character of the kind you have made of others, and if it was missed by the moderators, please report it so that it can be handled appropriately.

I must have missed that

 

[danvolker]

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke

If you see a dangerous instructor and don't report him, you are a part of the problem. .

Pete, the problem here, which we have been reminded of ad nauseum by so many SB members, is that the vast majority of "reported dangerous instructor actions/events" are IGNORED by the training agency. Most people, myself included, feel that if we get all worked up over an event like this, and get committed to reporting it....we will spend a huge amount of time, and it will be entirely wasted...No one at the agency will do anything to FIX the problem instructor/and or practice....

I don't know about you, but I have limited time for charging against windmills. I will do some of it here on SB for rants, because I think it is clear that SB members actually care more about safety issues than do most Agency people...the agency view is "profit-volume against collateral damage potential" ....If "collateral damage potential gets to high, they will "consider" dealing with "safety standards"...but of course, they will not ENFORCE the safety standards, so much of this will be lip service.

The 4 to 1 DSD ratio was an example of Willis taking a far more responsible position than PADI.....Only a fool could argue that one instructor could be as safe with 4 students as he could be with 2 students....Or an agency, APPARENTLY, when profits made are a large consideration.

 

[Zippsy]

The 4 to 1 DSD ratio was an example of Willis taking a far more responsible position than PADI.....Only a fool could argue that one instructor could be as safe with 4 students as he could be with 2 students.....

That's #80! Who will be #81?



(Dammit, I came out of retirement for that?)

 

[The Chairman]

Pete, the problem here, which we have been reminded of ad nauseum by so many SB members, is that the vast majority of "reported dangerous instructor actions/events" are IGNORED by the training agency.

"The" training agency? There are several. Here we have one agency, PADI, that culled an instructor and they are being castigated by yet another agency's CEO for doing just that. There were two instructors kicked out by another agency and were reported to the other agency they teach for. The agency's response? "As long as they're certifying students, we're OK with them." Telling you which agency that was would be hearsay (third party), so I had best leave it be.

Guess what? The only other report PADI got on that instructor was from an incidence the day before. Where are all the other incident reports? They never were made, because you've convinced yourself how ineffectual it is without even trying it and so has everyone else. It's a self fulfilling prophecy and you're one of the core evangelists.

Wouldn't it be grand if an incident report caused an instructor to earn points, making their insurance go up? That would be just like cars are handled now. It might not even be possible, but jack up an instructor's insurance and watch them get a lot more careful.

The 4 to 1 DSD ratio was an example of Willis taking a far more responsible position than PADI...

Only a fool would see that as anything but an economic decision. That has done more to promote safety than any other factor. It's how gear gets better and why DSDs are 4 to 1 and not 6 or 8 to 1. It's why one agency did away with CESAs and snorkels in OW. You guys see profits as evil, but they are a driving force for change in this country.

 

[boulderjohn]

Take another example......In NY State where I grew up, there was a Regents Exam for all high school students to show how well their teachers did at teaching the curriculum, as well as how well the kids learned, or how well they failed to learn the material up to senior year. I would argue that this was one reason why NY state high schools in the 70's, had higher level education than most Florida 2 year colleges....and that a NY kid going to a Florida college for freshman year, would be shocked at the pathetic level of math, science and writing skills common to kids that were educated in Florida. ...Florida being a state without any functional method of enforcing a given quality of education, teacher skill, or cumulative learning of students.....

I grew up in New York taking the Regents exam, and I taught in New York teaching for the Regents exams. At no time were they used to evaluate the teachers who taught the students.

How on Earth would you equate this to scuba? What is the equivalent you would like to see? Should a new diver be tested by an independent instructor evaluator to see if the skills were adequately taught?

It is easy to stand up and shout, as both you and AWAP do, that agencies should do a better job of evaluating the work done by their instructors. Like AWAP, you repeatedly refuse to tell how that would be done.

I must have missed that

Pete, the problem here, which we have been reminded of ad nauseum by so many SB members, is that the vast majority of "reported dangerous instructor actions/events" are IGNORED by the training agency.

No, Dan, it is not repeated Ad Nauseaum by many SB members. It is repeated ad nauseum by YOU. You say it so often it sounds like an army of posters are saying it.

But how do you know what happens to those reports? Since you refuse to make one, you have no personal experience. You are not invited inside PADI headquarters to see what happens. You are completely making up your evidence. This is not the first time. Let's talk about your argument that people should not use dry suits because of all the cases of people dying after shooting to the surface feet first because of their lack of buoyancy control--a pure fabrication used to support an unsupportable position. It is easy to support an unsupportable position when you get to make up your supporting facts. The rest of us have to rely on the truth.

Every quarter, PADI publishes the results of their investigations. They report the various levels of discipline, including expulsion, given to various members. A list of expelled members is public for all to see. How did these lists come into being if those reports are all being ignored?

 

[danvolker]

When I first began doing TOOKA ( much like Snuba) instruction, Willis had us limited to 2 divers....even though it would be easy enough to run 4 divers on a tooka, and since each is exactly neutral or perhaps a pound positively buoyant, their ascending and descending is regulated by their swimming--and is easy for them to master ( rather than a BC device they would be highly unlikely to use correctly).

The real issue I found with 12 year olds, is that you can tell them to swim slow, and to stay together till you are blue in the face...but "some kids" will agree with this, then when they see a turtle or ray or squid or other large and cool marine life, they are off to the races in a nano second....often one going one way, another in a totally different direction. For a DSD, it is easy to handle one kid....Some instructors can handle two with this bolting potential, if they stay totally in arm's reach the whole dive--but this is not the norm that you see with DSD's....for 4 of these kids, forget it...if one or two bolts after a fish or turtle, the instructor has to decide who is safe, and who they should follow....this is a decision no instructor should ever have to make...

At least with the Tooka or snuba, you can prevent bolting by holding on to the air hoses ( which are connected to the weightbelts of each kid--you don't pull on the regulators, you pull on the line conntected to the weightbelt--they just find themselves swimming where you want to them--often not even aware of how or why they were where they are ), you can be reigning them in like a team of horses.....you can pull them together, no matter what direction any of them try to take off in, and you can control their speed. You can enforce eye contact. And with the 2 person limit, this is very easy.

I could probably handle 4 kids like this, but it would be more dangerous--more possible for one or more to somehow create a problem...and then there are too many kids to deal with. Safety has to come first. This was the Willis position.

---------- Post added January 6th, 2015 at 01:02 PM ----------

I grew up in New York taking the Regents exam, and I taught in New York teaching for the Regents exams. At no time were they used to evaluate the teachers who taught the students.

At Eden Highchool, the school had some teachers that consistently, every year, had their students scoring much higher than any other teachers on the SAT's or Regents exams in their subjects....My High School chemistry teacher, Mr Varco, was so phenomenally superior to any other chemistry teacher, he was an off the chart advantage for his students once they got into college....and not just in college chemistry, but also in math and biology. The school knew this...his kids showed cumulative testing results NOTHING LIKE other teachers. The kids knew it, the parents knew it, the school board knew it....Without the SAT's or the Regents, kids could have raved about him, but it would not have been an effective way for the School Board to consider how to best reward great teachers versus the ones that scored consistently far below the others ( with their kid's performance).

I think this has an obvious relationship to scuba instruction.

 

[Wookie]

I had forgotten this thread. http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/scuba-related-court-cases/453725-who-has-our-backs.html It's interesting to see how our perceptions change over time. It's also interesting to remember that PADI fired the first salvo in this whole event, not SDI/Carney.

 

[boulderjohn]

At Eden Highchool, the school had some teachers that consistently, every year, had their students scoring much higher than any other teachers on the SAT's or Regents exams in their subjects....My High School chemistry teacher, Mr Varco, was so phenomenally superior to any other chemistry teacher, he was an off the chart advantage for his students once they got into college....and not just in college chemistry, but also in math and biology. The school knew this...his kids showed cumulative testing results NOTHING LIKE other teachers. The kids knew it, the parents knew it, the school board knew it....Without the SAT's or the Regents, kids could have raved about him, but it would not have been an effective way for the School Board to consider how to best reward great teachers versus the ones that scored consistently far below the others ( with their kid's performance).

I think this has an obvious relationship to scuba instruction.

How? Please explain. How does PADI know how well an instructor's students are doing?

As a former school administrator, I was required to take an entire course in teacher evaluation. Yes, test scores, can help, but by themselves they are not a reliable measure. You have to look at a lot more than that. for example, an excellent teacher is usually excellent at controlling and dealing with problem students. At one school at which I worked, we realized after a while that the teachers (like me) who handled discipline issues well got all the kids with a history of discipline problems. When a teacher with poor discipline had a problem with a student, that student was transferred into class by a teacher who knew what he or she was doing. Before long the bad teacher had small, easily managed classes with only angelic students in attendance, while the good teachers had classrooms swelling with problem students.

When special education students are placed in regular classrooms--which is the norm for nearly all of them today--the special education teachers usually get to place them in the classroom where they think the teacher's skills are most apt to be helpful to the student. In the last school in which I worked as a teacher, I got suspicious and checked. In an English department with 12 teachers, the special education teachers had placed all of the special education students into the classes of two of those teachers--another teacher and I. Since I also taught the advanced Placement classes (which of course had no special education students), that meant that the rest of my classes were more than 50% special education students.

In other words, in some schools, the least competent teachers will often be among the best in terms of test scores, while the best teachers should get awards for finishing as well as they do.

 

[danvolker]

How? Please explain. How does PADI know how well an instructor's students are doing?

As a former school administrator, I was required to take an entire course in teacher evaluation. Yes, test scores, can help, but by themselves they are not a reliable measure. You have to look at a lot more than that. for example, an excellent teacher is usually excellent at controlling and dealing with problem students. At one school at which I worked, we realized after a while that the teachers (like me) who handled discipline issues well got all the kids with a history of discipline problems. When a teacher with poor discipline had a problem with a student, that student was transferred into class by a teacher who knew what he or she was doing. Before long the bad teacher had small, easily managed classes with only angelic students in attendance, while the good teachers had classrooms swelling with problem students.

When special education students are placed in regular classrooms--which is the norm for nearly all of them today--the special education teachers usually get to place them in the classroom where they think the teacher's skills are most apt to be helpful to the student. In the last school in which I worked as a teacher, I got suspicious and checked. In an English department with 12 teachers, the special education teachers had placed all of the special education students into the classes of two of those teachers--another teacher and I. Since I also taught the advanced Placement classes (which of course had no special education students), that meant that the rest of my classes were more than 50% special education students.

In other words, in some schools, the least competent teachers will often be among the best in terms of test scores, while the best teachers should get awards for finishing as well as they do.

Fine...you can talk about the average teachers or poor ones without problem kids....And an administrator has to deal with problem kids....I don't care about problem kids in school...I care about the kids that want to get an education...that want to learn and go to college. So your comparison is less than compelling to me...And kids that get in a dive class, and don't pay attention or don't want to learn, need to be instantly out of the class. Done Deal.

For scuba, there are a small number of really excellent instructors, there are a large number of average=mediocre instructors, and a pretty large number of really terrible instructors.

While a terrible high school Chemistry teacher might make your son or daughter achieve far less later in college, than they should have ( had they enjoyed a great chemistry teacher in highschool)...this terrible teacher is not likely to cause the untimely death of your son or daughter....

But in the high school environment of NY State, much better protection exists against your son or daughter being matched to a terrible teacher, than the Dive Environment in Florida and other tourism destinations--and these Dive Environments actually can threaten the lives of your son or daughter---so if anything, they NEED the equivalent of the SAT or Regents exams far more with scuba instruction.

Dive instructors that typically turn out great students, would end up with an obvious HIGH VALUE to Dive Shops and Resorts, and the top 5% could pull quite large incomes from the BRAGGING RIGHTS big shops and Resorts would promote with them...

And Dive instructors with typically POOR performance of their students, would not get hired except by the worst shops...and would soon be out of the business--as they SHOULD BE.

---------- Post added January 6th, 2015 at 02:17 PM ----------

Post Script....
In NY State school system, because of the SAT's and Regents, and the excellent Advanced Placement and College Prep programs....Parents that really care about getting their kids the best education possible, have the means at their disposal to look at the scores that teachers average with their classes---for key subjects in college.... Your father could have done this when you were a freshman in HighSchool, and then if he saw you had one of the worst averaging teachers, he could make the "sit down meeting" with the Principle, and your Dad could get YOU moved into the class with the optimal teacher. While I think this is important in high school, I think it is far more critical in choosing a Dive Instructor for your son or daughter....or even for the parent themself( for their scuba instruction--if the comparison tool exists, why not use it? ) !!!!