I had, and still have, mixed feelings about Fundies and the way it is taught.
a. The contradiction of teaching & evaluating at the same time. In my class, one of my teammates was denied a Tech pass because he didn't properly intervene IN THE FIRST valve drill he "supervised." Huh? All that was needed was for the instructor to discuss the "mistake" (assuming it WAS a mistake) during the debrief and NONE of us would have made it again. He, and the rest of the us, didn't KNOW what he did was wrong and yet it was sufficient (for that instructor) to deny him the pass.*
b. The long days -- I think it is just bad planning and training. One of the main tenants of GUE training is the "Rule of Primacy" -- that which you learn first, you learn best and is the training to which you will revert. WELLLL, what do the long days of most GUE classes teach people? That it is OK to dive when you are tired, that you needn't get enough sleep, food or water, etc. NO! That is wrong. You should be taught that you DON'T do a dive when you are tired or have not had enough sleep or aren't eating properly or aren't hydrating properly! But instead, you are penalized if you say "No Mas" when you should be congratulated for it. BTW, this is even more true for the technical classes because the stakes are just that much higher.**
c. The concept of "the provisional pass" is, to my way of thinking, stupid. You either have gotten the basic information or you haven't. At its core, the "provisional" is the Instructor's statement to you that within 6 months, if you work at it, you will have polished the basic skills you now have. OK, well, then why not just say that -- you have passed, in that you have obtained the basic knowledge and understand the skills and now you need to work on them to become proficient -- AND I TRUST YOU TO DO SO!!!!***
As I wrote, I continue to have mixed feelings about GUE training -- the standards are great but the implementation sucks.
------------------------------------------------------
*The issue in question was the "watcher" didn't stop the "doer" from shutting off both of his valves. The watcher (and I who was the 3rd member) both thought we were supposed to let him do it, find out the response and then help him (donate) if he didn't figure it out himself (which he did). We didn't know we were supposed to stop the drill once he started doing it wrong.
**I had this discussion with my Full Cave instructor who maintained it was bad teaching practice to stress the students with 10 - 12 hour days. He told me he used to teach this way but realized it was just teaching bad habits AND that after 7 hours or so, nothing much more was learned anyway. He also maintained it was a violation of norm of teaching scuba which limited teaching to no more than 8 hours a day (this might have been a specific country thing -- here, Mexico).
***I took "diving lessons" from Andrew G. and just before he gave me a HeliOx card said, "You have the basics, you need to go out and dive to flesh out what you've been taught. I know you won't do anything stupid so THAT is why I believe you've earned the card even though you still need to work on things." I thought, and think, Andrew's concept is superior to the GUE concept. For what it's worth, this was very similar to the thinking of my Cavern/Intro instructor.
