Dumbing down of scuba certification courses (PADI) - what have we missed?

[Hoomi]

Any performance, whether a public performance of a musical composition, or else the performance of a scuba dive, is subject to the mindset of the performer. Performance anxiety isn't necessarily limited to having an audience, and some people will suffer from confidence problems in a given discipline regardless of how much training and practice you give them.

Other people take to a given discipline as though they were born into it.

What I see here is a tendency to blame the training, and thereby establish a set order to the cause and effect. However, people don't know if what they are seeing is leading or lagging the other factors.

People also tend to cast about for anything at all to blame for their "failures" other than themselves. "The training was inadequate" is far more ego-satisfying than saying, "I didn't study or practice enough." "My instructor was a flake" sounds far better than "I was a flake."

Does a 100 hour training course truly provide that much better training? Or is the person that is willing to undergo 100 hours of training the kind that will apply their training better? Which is the cause, and which is the effect?

It's nearly impossible to tell, isn't it?

 

[Thalassamania]

...
People also tend to cast about for anything at all to blame for their "failures" other than themselves. "The training was inadequate" is far more ego-satisfying than saying, "I didn't study or practice enough." "My instructor was a flake" sounds far better than "I was a flake."

What I see here is a tendency to blame the training, and thereby establish a set order to the cause and effect. However, people don't know if what they are seeing is leading or lagging the other factors.

No, what you see here is an opinion that is the result of 50 years of diving experience combined with almost 40 years of diving instructional experience during which I had the opportunity to work, extensively, with some of the most competent and respected diving instructors in the world. I have no need to make excuses for incompetents or mental basket cases, in fact, it was my sometimes my duty to repair them or to wash them out.

Does a 100 hour training course truly provide that much better training?

Yes.

Or is the person that is willing to undergo 100 hours of training the kind that will apply their training better? Which is the cause, and which is the effect?

It is not optional, they don't get to choose one or the other, it's 100 hour or nothing unless they've had training prior to coming to the university, in which case it was my problem to get them up to the level of performance expected of a new 100 hour graduate. This often took as long or longer than the 100 hour course itself.

It's nearly impossible to tell, isn't it?

No. It's really easy to tell.

 

[Hoomi]

No, what you see here is an opinion that is the result of 50 years of diving experience combined with almost 40 years of diving instructional experience...

Let's look at that bolded word, shall we?

From Merriam-Webster:

Main Entry: opin·ion
Pronunciation: \ə-ˈpin-yən\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin opinion-, opinio, from opinari
Date: 14th century
1 a: a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter b: approval, esteem
2 a: belief stronger than impression and less strong than positive knowledge b: a generally held view
3 a: a formal expression of judgment or advice by an expert b: the formal expression (as by a judge, court, or referee) of the legal reasons and principles upon which a legal decision is based

While you can claim 3 a applies to your opinion, 2 a is really the most accurate description of what you are rendering. You are giving a belief that you hold stronger than just an impression - based on your years of experience - but less strong than positive knowledge.

Positive knowledge requires empirical data, something that STILL has not been presented in this discussion. Where are the documented studies, including control groups and comparison statistics to back up your claims? If you have them, by all means present them!

Instead, though, your claim to authoritative declaration is based on your experience.

So, if I take your years and weight your opinion by that, then since my instructor has more years of experience than you do, I should weigh his opinion more heavily than yours, and thereby invalidate your input.

Now, granted, being as fair as humanly possible here, I would also have to try and quantify the other aspects of both his experience and yours, hoping to objectively evaluate how each factor contributes or detracts from the strength of your opinions.

In the final analysis, though, opinions - no matter how founded in experience - are by nature subjective. I don't say this to be critical, because all of us form opinions based on our perceptions, biases, and individual senstivities. Facts are objective; our interpretation of facts may be subjective, but the facts themselves are objective. They are not biased. We all agree that it is fact that our atmospheric air is 20.9% oxygen (usually rounded up to 21%). We can measure that. It's a repeatable metric. It isn't my guess based on the limitations of personal observation; it's scientifically documented.

Now, as to your 100 hour course. I certainly do not dispute that your course consistently produces better divers than a basic PADI OW course. However, I again question cause and effect, and I'm going to once again flip the question to a parallel.

Do private music lessons produce better musicians than group lessons because the teaching is dramatically better? Or does the commitment level required by private lessons attract more serious musicians? When someone is taking music lessons in a group, possibly at the urging of a parent or on a lark, are they going to take them as seriously as the person who seeks out a private teacher and pays a higher cost for those lessons?

Is it not possible that your course attracts students who are more serious about diving, while a shorter (and presumably less expensive) PADI or SSI course would tend to attract more marginal students who weren't as willing to commit to the work you require? You produce better results partially because you attract better students. The best instructors in the world still have to deal with the problem of students who don't want to apply the lessons. Some continue trying, and some wash them out. In any case, though, a student only learns when they invest the effort in the learning process.

Frankly, if NAUI's website had listed any NAUI facilities in my area, I would have looked into those. I elected to skip one shop's lessons because they were even more compressed time-wise than the other shop's lessons were, and despite my continued discussion with you, I tend to agree that the skills necessary for safe diving require more time than many students or instructors even are giving them.

What I don't care for, though, are these declarations that a given program is deficient and its graduates unsafe based on conjecture and opinion, rather than on documented case studies and verifiable facts.

By the way, don't try bluster on me. I have nearly thirty years working in a bomb factory, and I've put up with blustery managers for that entire time. I'm plenty close enough to being a grumpy old coot myself. I didn't let grumpy old coots push me around when I was young, and I'm sure not going to let them do so now.

 

[GrimSleeper]

Going back to a place before it all got a bit fractious...

I think the biggest problem with today's training is the lack of time spent in training. Dive Centers need to train as many students as possible in order to make profits. Thus many divers are trained in as little as 10 - 15 hours for classroom, pool AND open water.

I don't know about other agencies, but PADI recommend 24 course hours for Open Water. I'd assume everyone else is similar (or, to appease the bashers, let's assume all the other agencies require more hours!). If an instructor is pushing out Open Water-certified divers after 10 hours of teaching, that's not the agency's fault: that's a cowboy instructor who has no regard for his/her profession or for the safety and enjoyment of his/her students.

No amount of debating falling standards or blaming agencies is going to cure the problem of people who are instructing for the wrong reasons, but certainly PADI (and, presumably, everybody else), have mechanisms for reporting this sort of bulls*@t teaching. Maybe if we really want diver education standards to rise, we all need to take a more honest approach to breaches of existing standards and engage in some serious self-regulation, THEN we can go back to the debate about what standards should be.

 

[kathydee]

Learning diving skills over an extended weekend or over two weeks is an informative experience – practicing the skills until they are mastered and can be confidently and/or automatically executed (even when the mind is petrified with fear) is an entirely different story.

If at all possible, the body needs to be programmed to respond to emergencies before engaging in any dangerous activity or sport – teaching the mind is only the beginning--- for the majority of us mortals, the body programming can only occur through repetitive experience.

SCUBA is a relatively new to me, but I am not a stranger to dangerous sports. I spent many, many days rock climbing and many nights sleeping on vertical cliffs. One day, the unexpected happened. All I can say is thank god my experienced hands moved much faster than my mind, and thank god my mind stayed focused and relatively calm----

My diving experience has clearly taught me that the same "experience vs. knowledge principle" applies to underwater SCUBA emergancies. Accidents are NEVER planned, but so often avoidable before the activity starts - so if that day ever comes again. Personally, I want as much experience/training as possible to carry me through. Anything less is negligence on my part.

Now that I understand a little more, I actually like that the old PADI course was split up. One cert, then time to practice & gain understanding of the value of the next cert, etc. A gradual acquisition of knowledge with time to integrate.

Thalassamanra, I wish you were teaching PADI courses. I’d probably come find you and and hope for a tough-love ass-kicking rescue course that flushed out and sutured up all my SCUBA weaknesses! From your posts, I will guess that one could only be so lucky as to have such an experienced instructor such as yourself!

 

[Walter]

I would think it would be common sense to verify the operation of your safety gear before diving, including the octo. Granted, common sense isn't as common as its name might imply, so expecting people to do a rather simple, intelligent step is rather presumptuous.

I agree with both your points.

I would also like to point out that PADI lists Buddy Breathing as preferable to the ESA as well.

According to the PADI Instructors who've posted here in other threads, that hasn't been PADI's position. I wonder when it changed? BTW, where did you find that info?

This is again an anecdotal statement. You say "most"; do you have any documentable statistics to quantify your statement? Or, are you basing it only on the complaints you've heard? I wouldn't doubt that you might have heard an overwhelming majority of complaints from people about their training. It's pretty much a given that unhappy people make more noise than happy ones do. A business could have a 90% or better rate of happy customers, and it's still a good bet the majority of their feedback mail is going to be complaints, because the few unhappy ones are the ones who will sound off.

It has nothing to do with complaints. It has everything to do with the observation of thousands of divers over 2½ decades, including working as a captain/DM taking divers out in the Keys. Read some of the threads here on ScubaBoard, there are several started by certified divers asking when they will be ready to dive without a DM.

Here again, the logical question: Are they not better prepared because of their training? Or are they not better prepared because they lack basic self-confidence?

Adequate training includes confidence building.

I've heard older divers talk about their first few times in the open water, and many of them say similar things to what you're reporting from new divers.

Define your terms. Did these older divers start diving (like your instructor) in the 1940s or 50s, in which case they very likely had absolutely no training at all? Did they start diving in the 1980s, in which case the training was significantly different from today? What training did they have? Without knowing what their initial training was like, your conclusions are meaningless.

I'm either clueless, or what? You didn't finish your statement. Either you lost your train of thought, or else your English teacher was inadequate and failed to ingrain in you the simple rules of written English.

You are correct. I screwed up. While multitasking, I left my post and when I returned to it, I'd forgotten I'd not completed a thought and didn't adequately proofread it before posting. I've gone back and edited it. Thanks for pointing it out.

Yes, that's an unfair statement, and I hope it managed the rhetorical purpose of getting you to see a point.

Nope. It's not unfair at all. I screwed up. I lost my train of thought. You were right. I made a mistake.

For one, you have no idea what I have or have not been reading. You assume I have not read what you consider authoritative texts because I question your statements. You are assuming I'm having a harder time learning less.

I assume you have not read that one approach is easier than another or you are ignoring it. If I've missed an option, please tell me what it is. As for authoritative....you are currently taking your first class. I've taken, observed and taught many classes. Some of those classes were one style, some were the other, some were a mixture. I've taken folks who were unable to complete the typical class of today and easily turned them into competent, self-assured divers using the same methods I use for any class. They've been amazed at how much easier my class was than the one they couldn't complete.

Excuse me, sir, but you are not in my class, are you? You have no idea what I have been learning, or how difficult it has or has not been for me. You merely embrace the conclusion that I fit into the preconceived average you wish to support by your statements, and project onto me the inadequacies inherent in that demographic.

I am not in your class. I have no idea what you've been learning. I have no idea how difficult it's been for you. I have no idea what type of class you are taking. You might very well be in what I consider to be an inadequate class, the odds favor it, or you may very well be in the best class ever taught. I have not indicated any toughts about the class you are currently taking. You've assumed the generic "you" I used was a personal "you." Sorry for the confusion.

 

[TSandM]

kathydeee, you've probably figured out already that you poked a stick in an anthill! Lots of posts and lots of vehemence, but not very many people who have actually answered your question.

If I'm reading correctly behind your actual words, you're interested in what YOU should do to augment your current training -- in other words, what YOU missed. I didn't certify in "the old days", but I can give you an idea of what I've discovered since my OW class is out there to learn.

First off, I think it's good to know something about gas management, and this is not taught ANYWHERE in the PADI recreational curriculum, all the way to instructor. It is not felt to be necessary. HERE is an article that can get you started.

Second, there's a lot to learn about decompression strategies, even for recreational divers. HERE is an article that might help you form a gestalt understanding of ascent planning (you will have to register on that site to read it).

Third, unless your instructor was unusual, you have not been schooled to perform all the usual problem-solving skills underwater WHILE DIVING. Since, in a lot of diving environments, there may be no reasonable accessible bottom to sit on while dealing with issues, it is good to learn how to clear or replace a mask while in the water column, and how to accomplish an air-sharing ascent with buoyancy control. Again, these are things that may not ever be taught in the standard curriculum.

There are a lot of other things to know about diving, like practical navigational skills or safe night diving, but there ARE additional classes that address these deficiencies. The ones I've listed above are the ones where you could get through the entire non-professional recreational diving curriculum without ever encountering those topics or skills.

 

[kathydee]

Thanks TSand M,

Only on Scuba Board for about a month or so and have already learned you and nemrod, among others are always quite clear and to the point. I definitely appreciate the info & will visit the links.

Thanks!

But I have to say I have learned plenty through the debate so thanks to you all. Didn’t really know what my original post was starting. Now 1,400+ people have viewed this thread, my guess is that many other new divers seek continuing education information too & the advice is much appreciated by many.

My own SCUBA training was unusual. Went on vacation and did a 8m discover scuba shore/wreck dive. Enjoyed it and the price was right so kept doing 2:1 discover dives. The DM had worked the site continously for 11 years & was very attentive. He taught us to check our gear, clear our masks/regs, pay attention to our gauges & take weight belt/gear on/off, do back flips, etc on the sandy bottom @ safety stops. We slowly progressed from 8m -12m-15m-18m. By the time we left, we had logged 14 dives down to 23m and had no certification - but we did not know better. (I will say I have returned to dive with him after OW/AOW - the DM is still the most attentive I have seen).

A traveling DM strongly suggested that we seek certification. So found a professional dive school, which was very alarmed at our dive log but gladly started the OW course. Plugged into PADI videos, read chapters, intense reviews w instructor and chaper end tests without notes and more review after each test.

Because we already had dive experience, they decided 2 days of supervised diving and 1 day fun diving with a DM was enough (I wish there were more). A day in the pool practicing everything: gear on/off, reg out, buoyancy, out of air, mask off, simulated free flow reg, rescue intro, navigation intro, everything except buddy breathing - which was taught as preferable to an emergency ascent. Practiced a simulated ESA across the pool. The instructor had a flight scheduled so we insisted on a western replacement for OW.

The new dive instructor normally trained instructors and was pretty unhappy his boss forced him teach an OW course - No candy coating. Sandy bottom allowed the practice of all exercises. He did not supervise our pool work & wanted to make sure we had really learned & were confident. He immediately stripped most of my wt, and really put us through drills to prove what we learned in class. One set of drills around 8 meters another @ 15 meters and then again and again. In 3 dives I think we had about 10 minutes of fun diving - the rest was exercises.

But dive confidence built with experience NOT with KNOWLEDGE. 1st I wanted DM's to "hold my hand." Slowly I crept into my own confidence - later when I felt my own knowledge more appropriate than some DM's decisions, it was time to take personal responsibility.

Thanks for the help with direction.

 

[Hoomi]

The point of Buddy Breathing being preferable to ESA is in the current PADI Open Water Student Manual, though I do suppose there should be a clarification.

In the PADI manual, it lists 5 options for ascending in a low air or out-of-air situation, in order of preference. The first, if possible, is a normal ascent. As explained, particularly from shallower dives of 60' or less, most divers should be able to accomplish this. Second is to ascend using an alternate air source, such as the buddy's octo (or primary, depending on preference of the two divers involved) or a pony bottle. Third is the controlled emergency swimming ascent, which they state is a viable option if your buddy isn't close by and your depth no greater than 20 to 30 feet. Fourth is Buddy Breathing, and the least favored option is the bouyant emergency ascent (PADI Open Water Diver Manual, pps. 158-159).

Now, is the ESA previously mentioned in this thread the same as the CESA at #3, or the buoyant emergency ascent at #5?

Here again, personally, I'm all for adding any reasonable safety feature to my "toolbox" that I can, whether we're talking diving, or bicycle riding, or work, or whatever. Since my preferred dive buddy is my wife, I can certainly see learning and practicing Buddy Breathing with her, on that off-chance that someday we might just need it.

 

[Walter]

Now, is the ESA previously mentioned in this thread the same as the CESA at #3, or the buoyant emergency ascent at #5?

#3, PADI renamed it a few years ago. Putting it at #3 ahead of buddy breathing is insanely dangerous, IMO.