"Family of drowned Tennessee diver sues dive shop"

[Vieques Arnaud]

it's only a issue because so few follow that standard.

When I became a PADI instructor in 97 we were told that the students only needed to demonstrate each skill once "satisfactorily" to move on to the next. Thankfully that has changed in standards, unfortunately it hasn't changed much in practice.

If mastery was achieved in CW then we would have a much better industry. That said, I don't see any real energy to actually care about that "mastery" when you see articles like this.

Getting Scuba Certified On Vacation: It’s Easier Than You Think

One hour of CW, 25 skills per standards (not likely all done) and not a chance in hell that mastery was achieved, even if he was a gold medal swimmer.

Is PADI aware of that article? Well the picture is supplied by and they are well branded... I suspect they are.

While I agree with you I find it too easy to point the finger solely at the certifying agencies, the instructor teaching the class is ultimately responsible for making sure that at the very least these standards are met. Would you as an instructor be ok with teaching cw in one day? I know i'm not and I don't! We do a lot of referrals and I'd say that in 50% of cases we end up re-teaching at least one day of cw before we take students out in ow because skills were far from mastered! Is that PADI/NAUI/SDI/SSI...fault? No, it's an instructor not doing his job!

 

[sea_ledford]

I'm always surprised that the shops get such a pass in these incidents. The blame game goes from "standards suck, it's the agencies fault" to "the instructor knows the standards, he chose to violate them. It's all on him."

First I agree with both points of view. You just can't control more than 2 DSD students at a time regardless of conditions. You go left, 4th student goes right, you look back 10 seconds later and they are now 20 seconds away from you. Sorry bub, you're out of standards! You know, unless they come back alive. Then it's all cool.

At the same time, if you are in a situation where you know (or discover once you get there) you can't control the situation, time to be responsible for yourself, call the dive and make a new plan back on shore.

But what always gets left out is the conversation between the instructor and the shop:
Inst- "I see you have me down for four intros today. Conditions are looking crappy so I'm only going to take two at a time."
Shop- "The hell you are. Four paid, four are diving."
Inst - "But it's a standards violation! If something happens we'll both be screwed."
Shop - "Standards allow 4:1. Just remember there are 50 guys waiting in line for your job. Good luck paying rent this month."

Experienced instructors will tell the shop to take a hike. New instructors that just moved to some exotic location most likely won't say a thing.

I had this conversation twice with different employers during my tropical island dive instructor career. One of them I had been on island less than a month at the time. Not a fun situation to be in.

-Chris

 

[boulderjohn]

But what always gets left out is the conversation between the instructor and the shop:
Inst- "I see you have me down for four intros today. Conditions are looking crappy so I'm only going to take two at a time."
Shop- "The hell you are. Four paid, four are diving."
Inst - "But it's a standards violation! If something happens we'll both be screwed."
Shop - "Standards allow 4:1. Just remember there are 50 guys waiting in line for your job. Good luck paying rent this month."

There is more than a little truth in this. When discussing standards violation with the Director of Instruction with a shop, the exact words used were "Instructors are a dime a dozen." He said he gets an instructor coming in looking for work about every other week, so there is no need to pay them well or bow to any demands regarding working conditions (etc.).

 

[Ayisha]

BTW, our original very long draft of the article included a history of instruction using the kneeling technique, with that section created by dive historian Dr. Sam Miller. He had a lot of trouble finding out when it started, and we eventually realized it had always been done that way because instruction began with no means of achieving buoyancy whatsoever--wet suits had not even been invented yet. The old kneeling technique for skill introduction was a relic of old fashioned instruction that did not change when the BCD was invented.

Dr @sam miller never told me that story. Very interesting! And yet it continues...

 

[KevinNM]

I had a career in public education. Every state has laws designed to make sure that teachers stay current with changing information about teaching. That is a complete joke. In a large part of my career, my job was to give teachers that updated information. They are largely immune to it. I would bet that if I gave a test on current learning theory to a random collection of teachers, fewer than 10% would pass.

Well, almost 60% of the students graduate HS able to read at a 6th grade level, so obviously they don't need none of this theory stuff.