Tollie:
Bob, MHK
My disappointment comes from my own wish for the gifted instructors and the GUE leadership to have produced a genuine basic o/w course. Such a class takes non-divers to a higher level of diving skill, situational awareness and a strong knowledge base which helps keep divers safer than is commonly taught within a time and cost structure that many students can benefit from. From a very initial look, this has not been done.
One other point. The current cadre of GUE instructors is exceptionally skilled and have devoted time to developing what might be considered “pioneer grade” capabilities in environments that very few other instructors world wide posses. I wonder if skill levels of this type are really absolutely, positively necessary to teach a really sound basic o/w class.
Tollie,
One of the unintended byproducts of the DIR-F class was that as a result of the success of that class, it caused many, many previously certified students to question and challenge the status quo in the dive industry. There are a multiplicity of ways to effect and change the industry, and certainly teaching a higher quality class is one of them, but I firmly believe that another way to do it is to empower the marketplace. Once divers experience the difference between what and how we teach what we teach, they question their earlier classes. I strongly suspect that you are going to see the same cause and effect with respect to the OW class.
The dive industry is a very diverse group of people, and that diversity allows for a wide latitude of flexibility. Many of the existing agencies have operated in a vacuum for the last decade or so, inasmuch as IANTD and TDI led the way at the technical level, and PADI & NAUI led the way at the recreational level, so any "competition" [ such as the term is used] was miniscule, and any real challenges to the staus quo were virtually nonexistent. NAUI went with Nitrox and PADI quickly followed. NAUI went into the tech market, and PADI quickly followed, but in the final analysis the last decade or so there have been very minimal changes in the industry that had any lasting impact. The exception to that, in my view, is the formation of GUE. GUE has caused a ripple effect on the industry, and while it started from the top down, it is now more influential because of it's impact on divers and more influential because of the information that it has provided to the next generation of the diving community. Everyone says this, or that, can't be done, but then we go out and defy our critics every time. A large part of that impact is a direct result of the diversity I spoke of above. What the status quo of the dive industry was too quick to dismiss was the segment of the market that did in fact what more challenging classes, and what the existing status quo was too slow to respond to was the impact this segment would have on their students. You see a knee jerk reaction as many of the agencies try to respond with ideas like HeliTrox, or DIR-F like classes, but the larger picture the agencies miss is that the ability to offer classes such as this isn't the issue, the belief in the underlying tennants of the class is what the marketplace wants. Unless, and until, the industry embraces that methodology GUE has nothing to worry about. And if you have an existing infastructure in place that requires issuing 964,000 c-cards per year to meet your earnings per share estimates, it's unlikely that at anytime soon they'll be willing to sacrafice the revenue in favor of higher caliber classes. It's a simple matter of economics and a variance in ideological methodologies.
Existing agencies serve, and to a large extent created, a segment of the marketplace. GUE was formed, and to a certain extent was created to serve a different part of the marketplace. We wish them well in their endevours and we will just continue to go about our business with little worry about how they respond to our efforts..
If you go back into the archives of rec.scuba or the old tech diver list, you'll see volumes and volumes of naysayers saying the same thing about the DIR-F class as they are now saying about the OW class. It's history repeating itself all over again, and the critics were wrong then, and I suspect strongly time will prove them wrong again. The myth that divers want shorter, faster and cheaper classes was created by shops and agencies that benefited from the streamlined approach. Now that there is an alternative vehicle available we'll just let the marketplace do it's thing ;-)
Hope that helps.
Regards,
