Dive world is better off with tougher courses?

[jbd]

Exactly.

That doesn't necessarily mean he(Mike) would dive with the person. Nor should he feeled compelled to simply because the person has a C card. I have declined to take on one person as an AOW student. I have also declined to dive with another person even though he asked numerous times. I could care less about the card they have, if their attitude isn't right IMO, then I don't dive with them.

 

[daniel f aleman]

As a DM, I don't equate a c-card to diving prowess. I ALWAYS ask the person presenting one (in a conversational tone), "Who was your OW instructor, where did you take the course, where did you do your checkout dives?" I add questions about dive history and general dive knowledge - takes no more than 60 seconds.

 

[jbd]

I mean, I guess I wish there was a like 30% fail rate...

and then you had to retake the course over again...it should be similar to driver licenses...

There are probably more people who recieve extra training time so they can complete the course than most of us realize. I guess technically you could say that they "failed" at some point in the training and had to re-do the material in order to finish the course. I don't think 30% is a far from what is happening in this case.

I don't want students to fail the course. I want them to get it. One person might get it in two attempts while another might not get it until after the fourth or fifth attempt. Why should not getting it on the first or second attempt be reason to fail someone? Simply critique, re-teach and allow another attempt.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Good enough for what? If I still had a dive shop a card and a few bucks would get the diver an air fill.

Exactly.

Yes but if you go to an industrial gas supplier you can buy gas without a scuba certification card. If it were up to me and not dependant on an insurance requirements, I would sell gas to any one who had money and is willing to trade...no silly cert needed.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Our materials stressed that a certification was "a license to learn more".

You don't need a license to learn and a scuba certification isn't a license of any kind.

Certifications are marketed as a qualification and they are meant to certify what you have already learned. What you may or may not learn in the future isn't at issue.

Personally, I'd like to see the "c-card" go away completely and let instructors and/or agencies market training solely on the basis of the merit of that training.

They only get people to actually pay for such crap because people need the CARD for access. They're buying ACCESS. As it is, folks will pay for the card regardless of what the training is like. Get rid of the card and sell training if you can convince people that there is value to the training you offer.

And no, this isn't rocket science. I dived for years before I ever got certified. I originally got certified so I could get tanks filled anyplace rather than having to go where I knew people. the only thing I had after that class that I didn't have before the class was the card. I literally have boxes full of certification cards but I think I've taken about three classes that were really worth taking.

This whole c-card thing is a scam as far as I'm concerned.

 

[RiverRat]

This whole c-card thing is a scam as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah that's pretty much it. I took AOW simply because I didn't have anyone to dive with and it gave me a chance to get some more dives in and learn a few more things. It did NOTHING to make me advanced. But it helped. Rescue and Nitrox were good. Drysuit was ok as I got to dive one in the pool before venturing out on my own. Divemaster, I have to say I did learn a lot more from the book, physics and physiology.
And the mapping project was interesting. But I was at odds with some of the training methodology going on. And I didn't appreciate getting razzed about my "modified" gear, a BP/W, and being told "now no talk about backplates and wings" while helping out the OW classes. Pathetic really. Funny thing is now the shop owner tells me I can wear whatever I feel comfortable in while working in OW. So I guess he feels I have something to offer in spite of my "modified" gear.

In any event I think I'm done unless I go for instructor. The rest of the courses have nothing to offer me right now.

 

[texarkandy]

Seems to me this poll is kind of rigged to produce a certain result intended by it's author - because it doesn't have just a flat "No" answer - the only choice that comes close to a "No" answer requires the respondent to imply they should not have a C-Card either.

It would be interesting to see how the numbers change on the results if there were just a flat "No" choice

 

[MikeFerrara]

In any event I think I'm done unless I go for instructor. The rest of the courses have nothing to offer me right now.

I like taking classes. I also like researching things on my own. You can learn something on any dive and there are lots of books that contain information that is worth knowing. None of that is what I'm talking about when I say that the c-card thing is a scam.

Maybe an example...I cold give lots of them but I think this is a good one. Now that I have a nice camera I wouldn't mind getting a housing and training with a really good underwater photographer. I'm not talking about the PADI UW photographer class. I was a PADI underwater photgraphy instructor. I have the stupid card but I can't hardly get a good picture to save my life and that isn't a requirement. Why don't they require an UW photo instructor to be abe to take decent pictures? LOL

 

[ClayJar]

Our materials stressed that a certification was "a license to learn more".

You don't need a license to learn and a scuba certification isn't a license of any kind.

Don't get all wrapped up in semantics. I understand what you're saying about the value of cards, but if that's all you took from my wary posting to this thread, you do me an unfortunate disservice.

That phrase was a partial quote from page six of the NAUI Scuba Diver book (more or less equivalent to PADI OW). The full paragraph, which is highlighted in blue and which accounts for a line in the workbook is as follows:

Your NAUI Scuba Diver Certification card is just the beginning of your adventures in diving. It is your license to learn more about the underwater world. There is no one who knows everything there is to know about diving, but in diving, you'll find much of the fun is in the learning.

Is it a literal license? Of course not! As you say, it is merely a commonly accepted formality used to simplistically determine to whom to grant access to various diving-related things without further consideration, which is certainly not utopia.

Their point was to emphasize that while in the world we live a card is required to have access to the means of learning more, it is only the beginning; even the best diver has more to learn. It seems the only difference between them and you is that you would simply skip the part where you get a card saying you know the very basics. I suppose I can understand how that card could be seen as a negative incentive for further learning among some, but I can certainly identify with the emotional boost it gives a new diver. (Now, the "vanity cards" that AOW and "specialties" often amount to... those can go the way of the dodo. PADI MSD is unequivocally a vanity card; NAUI MSD, on the other hand, was nothing to laugh at, although the naming seems rather pretentious.)


Anyway, regardless of the whole to C or not to C considerations, *my* whole point was that rather than going to town on the poorly-qualified results of McDiver training, wouldn't it be a better idea if we decided that we would each step up to the plate and help other divers improve? Complaining to the agency isn't going to get anywhere. Filling in the holes in divers' educations so they, in turn, can assist other divers and so on, each one voicing their displeasure at their inadequate training? That might eventually get somewhere, but even if it doesn't, it'll help *those* divers.

Frankly, I'm a pragmatist. I do my part to positively influence those around me, be they instructors, shops, agencies, or whatever, but I don't get caught up in it. I probably can't effect change in an agency, but I can work with my diving friends on improving their diving (which, by all accounts, has made their diving more fun), and I can work on trying to build momentum amongst those at my LDS for more "cheap fun" dives, be they springs or pools or whatever, so that more divers can be exposed to better diving.

In my limited experience, the divers who were having the most fun have been the divers with the most diving skill, and that was apparent to everyone, even the unskilled divers around them -- perhaps *especially* to the unskilled divers around them. If it wasn't such a chore, who *wouldn't* want to improve their diving so they could have more fun? I am of the belief that improving your diving skill *ISN'T* a chore -- it's only the Card Of The Month concept that makes it such. If divers had some ready way to improve their skill (so their diving would be more fun) *and* have fun doing it... well, I don't think I needed an engineering background to do *that* math.

I suppose, then, that I must apparently be campaigning for more evangelization of the joy of diving well, and more effort into providing less-skilled divers with the means to better themselves outside the confines of the class-and-card system. Instead of trying to overthrow the system, why not just point out the useless bits by making them completely irrelevant, as many of them have become to me? (I actually had a shop tell me not to bother with a class because I'd already learned everything it would teach me. That ought universally to be the case with some "specialties".)


Well... I guess it was a decent Monday rant... "And now, back to your regularly scheduled thread."

 

[del_mo]

Who gets to decide the level of performance required to retain a c-card? And what would that level be? Should a diver HAVE to take refresher courses? While the original question is provocative, it strikes me as silliness. I would agree that new divers many times are just that, new divers. I suppose if someone watched me through my first dozen or so dives they would have wondered if I should be diving. Yet I saw an instructor on a vacation (doing DM duties) ripping a sleeping nurse shark out of it's bedrooms just to show off. But boy did his frog kick look great. So, who's worse? Me kicking up silt or the clown wrestling marine life?