Diver Training: How much is enough?

[The Chairman]

But I'm not even sure why I am bothering to write here, because we have points of view that are seriously entrenched. Despite all the effort that a variety of people have made to try to prove that a PADI instructor can ready a student for diving in local conditions, there are those who simply will not believe it is true. The rest of us will just keep on doing it.

I feel your pain. Some can only prove their worth by demeaning others. Hey, I do my class differently. The reasons why I do them differently even anger a few of the people I see as friends and comrades. But I would trust them to teach a loved one how to dive. Their honesty and more important, their humility make them great in my eyes, even if we do a few things differently. The others that seem to think that they are above educational evolution need not apply. If you're not intelligent enough to accede that there are possibly better ways to train divers, then I have no respect for what you stand for. It's not that they can't, but some old dogs just refuse to learn new tricks.

 

[Hawkwood]

Thank you Lynne for putting into words what I (and maybe other silent folks as well) have not been able to.

 

[boulderjohn]

When students do their OW locally, we of course orient them to that, but it is not a big deal to do so. We also take a little longer to talk about the affects of altitude and how to plan for it. Again, that does not take long. They do fine.

And that represents material that the warmwater checkout divers may not ever see.

You are so right. The warm water diver may never learn what it is like to use a 7mm wet suit. A warm water ocean diver may never learn to adjust tables to deal with high altitude.

On the other hand, I am sure they are suffering from missing that knowledge about as much as I am suffering from not knowing how to play the bassoon.

Or are you arguing that we should somehow require all warm water divers to take a tip to a cold water site so that they will have to experience those things? Are you going to argue that I should be required to experience ice diving as well, since I haven't done that yet?

 

[NAM001]

Most people in the learning process works n one of 2 ways. they learn basics and apply to a situation or they learn the situation and discard the basics. The ow course should be doing the culling for this division. They learn the basics apply them and when comfortable they move on at thier comfort to the next level. In the mean time they dive with more experienced divers and refine, reinforce and work towards mastery of the basic requirements they have been carded for. When thier time comes to upgrade thier training , they need to because they are motivated and ready to do more. That is the influence the mentors have on new divers. You can only put so much in a course till it becomes counter productive. I have absolutely no doubt that the lake diving in the south is a world apart from the shore diving of the pnw. Although ideal bouyancy is a noble cause you still have to get in and out of the water via the shore. Every geographoc location has its unique difficulties and for old timers its no big deal to adapt to many of them , but for the students with an overloaded bag of new stuff its an overwhelming rush of knowledge and skills. With so much that is included in some courses one has to ask, If this is the basics what is next?

 

[drrich2]

I've been mulling over the debating between DCBC & Peter, and some other posts. I don't know just what KWS meant by this statement, but it's illustrative so I'll quote it here:

The ow course should be doing the culling for this division.

I think this speaks to the heart of a philosophical dispute about the role of the instructor. Especially DCBC's persistent emphasis on an instructor requiring competency in added material as a condition for certification. That seems to be the sticking point. An instructor adding non-obligatory practical, needed knowledge to produce better divers no one opposes.

2 Diver wanna-bes, Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, want to certify and happen to live in areas with rough local diving. Dee applies to DCBC's course, Dum applies to Peter's. Dee & Dum both technically demonstrate all required skills and pass the knowledge reviews in the 'base' program, but marginally (think barely passed) and their grasp of instructor-added material was pitiful. Maybe they're both morbidly obese and a little on the dumb side, though competent adults in terms of making their own decisions.

I think DCBC's position is that he can deny an OW cert. card to Dee, but thinks Peter has to give one to Dum. I figure Peter will have a somewhat different viewpoint, but for sake of argument, let's say that's true, and the PADI way. Dum can dive but Dee can't. The issue is then what you think an instructor's role is. Options:

1.) Instructors are hired to teach interested adults to dive. If those students pass the minimums, they get the card. A good instructor educates them about their limitations and makes recommendations about what diving they should do prior to great improvement (e.g.: guide-led 'bath water' Caribbean supervised dives), but the student has an OW card, can get air fills and get accepted for charter boat trips, and if he wants to dive recklessly, he can. The student is empowered and can do as he chooses.

2.) Instructors are gatekeepers to protect bad divers from themselves - the instructor withholds the OW card to prevent the bad diver from having access to air fills and charter boat trips. Yes, the guy can buy his own compressor and sneak into some lake or ocean shore dive, but realistically, for most people it would largely block him from diving. The student is not empowered and the instructor can veto him from diving.

3.) Instructors are gatekeepers to protect the dive hobby & potential dive buddies from the problems created by incompetent divers; risk of governmental regulation, privately owned dive sites closing down (as can happen with cave sites), etc... Hence the idea of 'culling' students. Again, the instructor holds more power, the student less.

Community forum sentiment on paternalism vs. autonomy varies with issues. For example:

1.) People complain of dive charters not letting them go deep on dives without an AOW cert.

2.) People complain of dive charters not letting them solo dive, a vintage diver complained of a 'modern' instructor fussing at him about his gear setup being unsafe (diver was not a student, just at the same site), etc... How many snarky comments do we make about the 'Scuba Police?'

3.) But when an officially trained cave diver 'catches' a non cave certified explorer about to enter a cave, grabs him, gets him out of the water, berates & drives him away, he's praised for saving an idiot, protecting the sport and access to a site, etc...

Do you think the instructor's role includes culling some people who've met minimum requirements from entry to the hobby?

Richard.

 

[-hh]

You are so right. The warm water diver may never learn what it is like to use a 7mm wet suit. A warm water ocean diver may never learn to adjust tables to deal with high altitude.

On the other hand, I am sure they are suffering from missing that knowledge about as much as I am suffering from not knowing how to play the bassoon.

Or are you arguing that we should somehow require all warm water divers to take a tip to a cold water site so that they will have to experience those things? Are you going to argue that I should be required to experience ice diving as well, since I haven't done that yet?

Neither. I am simply pointing out the elephant in the room, which is that some divers receive less (potentially significantly less) basic OW training than others. While this may seem pedantically obvious, the crux of the matter is that this "got less stuff" customer is no longer a relatively rare exception, but is probably around 50% of the contemporary OW-I graduates today...as such, this 'gradient' (eg, differences in the effective 'minimums') is harder to ignore as isolated/rare.

... The ow course should be doing the culling for this division. ...

Please note the severe edit on the above; I hope this wasn't out of the intended context. If this is saying what I suspect it may be, the question is: "should be...but is it really succeeding in doing so?". My concern is that I see repeated propaganda (sorry - I can't think of a less blunt description) where diving is nothing less than 'fun, fun, FUN!!! which brings me utter dread, because it is catering to candidates with traits that are undesirable to have in a random buddy.

Sorry, but the physiological facts are that if you screw up, this sport will kill you. And even if you don't screw up, you still run a risk of buying the farm, from a variety of sources. It may not add up to be a particularly large risk, but it is still an objective risk nevertheless.

So...just how good of a job is the OW course currently doing in culling out unsuitable candidates? Anyone have any solid statistics on how many students are truly and really 'flunked' these days?

EDIT: and seeing what drrich2 has in the above post, there's the additional (& good) question of "IF" this culling should/shouldn't be a role of an instructor in the industry. I'm pretty much assuming that it is happening to some degree.


-hh

 

[Simon-]

The training students receive is not "more" in the same way it is not "less". The students receive the training applicable to the area.

I live, work and teach in the Middle East. Summer water temperatures at around 34c, winter about 19c.

Would it be reasonable for me to put a student who starts his course into a 7mm wetsuit or drysuit, complete with hood and gloves, because he might go and dive somewhere where that might be required? Of course not.

I learnt in the UK, and for the first 10 years, I dived nowhere else. 7mm's, semi-dry, drysuits were the norm. I haven't dived in the UK now for more than 15 years, and worn a drysuit once in that time. If I go back and dive in the UK would I just presume I can pick up where I left off, purely because I have carried on diving, albeit in warm waters, which are fairly benign most of the time. Not a chance. I'd take it steady and re-acclimatise to the conditions.

That is nothing to do with the agency or instructor that trained me. That is to do with my own common sense.

Too often and too quickly the finger is pointed at the agency, or at the instructor. The individual diver shoulders the responsibility for their own actions and decisions.

It was mentioned in a previous post "in conditions equal to or better than you were trained in", if the conditions aren't as that, pair up with someone you know/trust/can hire to ease you into, what is perceived as harder diving. I don't see it as harder, I see it as different.

 

[NAM001]

The culling process is related to an nstructor being honest with he student. The ones with that are the strugglers to make min preformance levels need to be told that although they passed the course they need a lot of work before moving on with any other training. Thier skills as they stand are not good enough for aow and aow level dives. That they should consider limiting thier diving activities to level X untill they can achieve better mastery of the skills. The ones that seem to be the naturals need to be told just how well they perform and that perhaps they should consider aow in the next X months if they intend to cnotinue the sport. This culls out those that should not be enrolled in follow on aow or greater courses. This puts the poorer skilled students on notice that they need work if they plan to come back to the same instructor. This culling can only happen in the initial courses of the pipeline. The same thing would go for the first technical course. It should be weeding out the prospects for more technical training. This is where the instructor tells a student,, Even if you passed this most basic level course, you need to understand you skills are no where near the required level for me to train you further with out some significant work on you part in the following areas.

 

[Diver0001]

Do you think the instructor's role includes culling some people who've met minimum requirements from entry to the hobby?

I'm going to regret getting back into this thread, but I must hate myself because here I go again. Anyway...

Richard, that was a great summary of the entire discussion.

I'm just going to brain-wave on the bit I quoted above.

- for one thing I think the DCBC's and Thal's of this world (they are not alone but they are the ones in this thread) aren't so much worried about "culling" students who don't make the grade. That's only part of it, and not the most important part. There is limited space in this world and frankly, not everyone can be the alpha-dog. Both DCBC and Thal are alpha males in somewhat hierarchical cultures which in part means that part of their work as alpha-dogs is make sure that the other dogs are "put in their place". In these discussions, there is a primal animal level of communication at work that basically boils down to the message that neither of them believe and anyone else should really be teaching unless they approve of that person. After all, they are the alpha-males and the alpha-males decide who is and isn't one of the cool kids. At any rate, that's how I perceive these discussions; also, it does feel personal to someone like Peter who, when he starts to get his tail up, gets it bitten. It doesn't matter to Thal or DCBC if Peter has a point or not. He has his tail up and that's what has to be dealt with. His point, and the point of anyone else who hasn't gotten their approval is perceived by them to be completely irrelevant as witnessed by the fact that no matter what you say and no matter how many times you try to correct the facts, they remain completely closed to any input whatsoever. To do so would be tantamount to allowing the sub-alpha dog to bite *their* tails and no matter how absurd the discussion gets, any potential show of vulnerability must be staunchly resisted.

It's exasperating because these discussions are a lot of beating around this primal bush and it really has nothing to do with scuba diving. It's basic animal nature that's just cloaked in a "scuba diving" discussion with a couple of guys asserting their dominance and a few others trying to say 'the king has no clothes', with decidedly mixed results. The net result is growing resentment and no resolution of the discussion is in sight.

- secondly, getting back to more relevant feedback; I think you may have missed something in your excellent analysis which IS relevant to scuba diving. In principle, one would expect it to be the case (but it isn't) that if the "process" of certification is followed by the instructor that the culling would automatically take place as a matter of process. So either the process is broken (DCBC's point) or the culling isn't necessary. PADI does, when training it's instructors tell you that if you follow process then you have done your job and that the job was done correctly. I don't believe this, and neither does Peter. I'm a project manager in real life and in project management there is a fair amount of "process" that needs to be followed too but process is only supporting (and can even get in the way) and every single competent project manager in the world would tell you that simply blindly following process (like Prince2, for example) will result in you producing a large a pile of paper but will not (except by accident) result in your project results being achieved. The same is true in diving. Instructors who only follow process (ie. teach to minimum standards) are missing the point and usually fail to achieve satisfactory results. I also believe that PADI misses this point, but that's my personal opinion. On the same token, insisting (as DCBC does, for example) that standards need to be raised (ie, changing the process) will not solve this problem. Instructors need to raise their thinking above "standards" and start thinking in terms of the results they want. Only then will the "process" (ie standards) be seen in correct context and they will serve their correct purpose. Peter gets that. Boulderjohn, as an expert in educational method, gets that. A few other people get that, probably because they also have real-world skills that help them see the big picture. But in these discussions, a lot of people don't get it and the discussion keeps coming back again and again to the issue of whether or not standards suffice.

As far as I'm concerned both DCBC and Thal could offer a HUGE service to the scubaboard community if we just agreed to look at training from helicopter level and they would discuss in detail ways that they know to "get those results". Some of that goes on in the Instructor-to-instructor forum but Thal seldom contributes to that forum and I don't recall DCBC ever posting in the back room.

So the status of the discussion is this: As it is, too many people miss the big picture and we're still, after all this time, spending the vast majority of our time (at least on the open forum) deciding whose tail should be held highest.... so for the time being nothing much is being achieved. Maybe one day we'll rise above that and I know that a few people keep hoping that it will happen sooner rather than later. I'm an optimist and I do believe that even "old dogs" can change..... so I'll keep trying because once we get past this "primal" BS this discussion could become one of the best we've ever had.

R..

 

[DCBC]

Do you think the instructor's role includes culling some people who've met minimum requirements from entry to the hobby?

Good summary Richard. The Instructor (whether he accepts the responsibility or not) is in a position of trust and is bound to act in the best interests of the Student. Perhaps I could generate greater income if I gave the Student the absolute 'minimums,' but in my mind I would have failed in my responsibility. Because of this, I don't certify anyone unless they are competent to dive with a member of my family (the 'Loved One Test').

I apply this 'test' to all my programs. If it's a Cave Course, I don't believe that I'm doing the student a favor by certifying him, knowing that he presents a danger to himself and those diving with him. Cave Divers generally respect this attitude (because the dangers are understood); but the same people often suggest that it's OK to dive in a more hazardous environment and that a OW Certification Card is a 'License to Learn.' A weak diver may eventually learn, but what is often unappreciated, is the level of danger that diver may be subjected to, until he gains further knowledge, skill and experience.

The fact that a Diver can take another training course isn't enough for me, as the majority don't. Insufficient training results in increased 'diver drop-out' and too often an unsafe diver that no one wants to dive with (imo).

It's my experience, that the knowledge and skill required to dive safely is dependent upon the diving conditions present. When the conditions change, so does the training required. For those who think that one training Standard can be all things, to all people, in all conditions, suffice it to say that I disagree. We'll leave it at that...

Unfortunately, diver training and certification is big business and is often 'profit based.'. I'm afraid that too often there are too many divers that are certified that shouldn't be. Although PADI may have changed (?) I don't forget the reasoning behind its creation: to lower training Standards, to broaden the market, thereby increasing diving equipment sales. This may not be a popular statement, but it's the truth nevertheless (personal conversation with John Cronin, co-founder of PADI and CEO of U.S. Divers, the World's largest diving equipment wholesaler).

I believe that most instructors feel that they are doing the right thing. In a Society where a diver certification card is not required at all, any training is certainly better nothing. My outlook toward diving instruction (now that I'm no longer attached to CMAS) is a personal one. I teach for the joy of teaching something that I've made my career doing. I have had and currently hold Instructor ratings with a number of dive training agencies. Personally, I have no horse in this race. Unfortunately, I've seen many training programs and some fall short imo.

To me, Diving hasn't just been fun and games. My students are aware of my approach and come to me for this reason. There are others who go to other Instructors for different reasons. Not every Instructor shares my perspective (nor would this be expected). Each student is an individual and has their own reasons for learning.

NetDoc, As to not being able to teach an 'old dog new tricks,' that's a condescending and inappropriate statement. I'm familiar with the newest developments in diving technology and education. I make no apology for applying my 42 years of teaching experience in the fields of recreational, technical and commercial saturation diving, towards the safe instruction of my students. If this ruffles someone's feathers, that's unfortunate.

Diver0001, I'm too old to consider myself an "Alpha-Dog." I've already passed the torch to the many Diving Instructors that I've certified in my time. It's now out of my hands and in the care of another generation. This doesn't stop me (or anyone else) from having their own opinion. An opinion in-which I believe is an experienced one...