Even before researching here, I thought two days seemed much, MUCH, too short to cover anything near an adequate amount of information on diving.
There's a lot of inadequacies within the system.
For example, a lot of Dive Instructors do the job because they want to, not because they earn their living doing it...this is especially true of the local, regional scene. It is because they have a paying day job outside of diving that these Instructors have any education ... if you look at the Agency standards (
here's PADI), not even a High School Diploma is required. As such, that's an Instructor attribute that has been provided by "luck", not by process.
YMMV, but simply being able to parrot back Boyle's Law isn't good enough for the Instructor.
In my local State, the Dive Industry's Standards to be an Instructor Trainer or PADI Course Director aren't even adequate to qualify them to be an Elementary School Substitute Teacher for a bunch of 4th Graders
(NJ requires completion of 60 college credits for Substitutes). So again, the professional educational qualification requirements of even the top leadership positions in the Education-providing Dive Industry is zero. Thus, qualified professionals are a matter of luck, not process (process = published standards).
Fundamentally, this is why the perennial advice given by veteran divers to new potential customers to the sport is: "its not the Agency, but the Instructor".
HH, I think you make a valid point. Perhaps what would be ideal is if DAN became the certifying authority, rather than each individual training organization.
It depends on what you mean by 'Certifying'. Certifying of students, or certifying of Training Agencies. I hope you don't mean the former!
However, we already have 'watchdogs' in the form of the toothless RSTC and all the Agencies (with DEMA) played a game back in the 1980s by getting ANSI Z86-3 created as an International 'Standard' that they claim to then follow. This was really just a very well orchestrated event that provided them some degree of legal liability topcover for their training, as it merely says that everyone follows the "Industry Standards" that they defined.
Unfortunately, the ANSI-ISO process isn't perfect. Simply documenting what the Industry Practices are does not actually provide for any proof that the Industry Practices actually perform well, or even adequately. But it does give your lawyers something to rely on if your Agency gets sued for killing a student: "we weren't different than anyone else".
As such, and also because DAN is a medical assistance and medical research organization, DAN should be the totally independent & ethical Industry Watchdog.
The way that DAN can effect change is to publish in their Annual report with a large section prominently highlighting how frequently we kill new divers ... and if one Agency is statistically worse than another, NAME them in print.
After the denial & CYA phase, lawsuits and fear of lawsuits will then kick in to actually start to improve things. And DAN's next annual report will show if any progress has been made, which will hold their feet to the fire.
Predictably, DEMA and the Agencies will scream that DAN's actions is hurting business, but that's a sham: the real truth is that anyone who dares to complain is merely announcing to the world that they have put their greed for the Almighty Buck ahead of the safety of their customers.
And when the guilty act surprised and say "we'll look right into it", the BS! flag should immediately be shoved in their spokesman's mouth, pointing out that there is proof in the DAN reports that they've known about this problem for 20+ years, so show us what attempts that they've already made, instead of empty promises.
NAUI, PADI, SSI, and so on, could teach the courses however they saw fit, but the results would have to speak for themselves. If word got around that Skipper's Scuba Shack in Dustpit, Oklahoma had an abysmally high rate of divers failing to qualify on the certification exam, it'd likely affect Skipper's business. He'd have to either correct his teaching methods, or go out of business.
Got to be careful there: local shops that develop a reputation for failing students go out of business because they're failing students, not because they're teaching to higher standards. By definition, the new customer is uneducated and commonly is merely looking for the lowest bar possible.
You really can't blame the new customer because he simply doesn't know better, and because the Industry (and I'm including DAN here) has done a good job of not providing the relevant information by which they could be meaningfully differentiated.
As such, what you need to do instead is to start the smackdown top-down from the Agency level, by providing the objective empirical data on how well their Students perform in real life (accidents & deaths).
From there, what you want to have happen is for Skipper's Scuba Shack put up a big sign in their window that says that they're proud to be teaching to the NAPI Agency standards, because DAN reporting shows that that Agency make the
safest divers.
This now differentiates Skipper's diveshop from Gilligan's diveshop, who is still teaching the other Agency's stuff. A credible source who is providing real information that differentiates training products will result in an improved ability for the customer to make an informed purchase decision, and will also permit the Skipper to actually charge more for his higher quality product...but only if he has proof instead of rhetoric.
Is that reasonable, and - more importantly - is that something that could realistically be brought about?
DAN could publish the Statistics tomorrow ... if they wanted to.
-hh
