How do you feel about PADI bashing on this thread??

[Thalassamania]

Personally, I do not teach any open water until the confined water sessions have been mastered! Additionally, until new divers are comfortable just kicking around the pool, they will never get the hang of buoyancy.

Do you really maintain that, within the confines of a conventional PADI entry-level course, your students display "mastery" of something? Anything?

mas·ter·y

(mās'tə-r&#275 Pronunciation Key
n. pl. mas·ter·ies

1. Possession of consummate skill.
2. The status of master or ruler; control: mastery of the seas.
3. Full command of a subject of study: Her mastery of economic theory impressed the professors.

 

[SparticleBrane]

PADI != "mastery" in any sense of the word....except how to get people to open their wallets.

 

[scubajcf]

Do you really maintain that, within the confines of a conventional PADI entry-level course, your students display "mastery" of something? Anything?

mas·ter·y

(mās'tə-r&#275 Pronunciation Key
n. pl. mas·ter·ies

1. Possession of consummate skill.
2. The status of master or ruler; control: mastery of the seas.
3. Full command of a subject of study: Her mastery of economic theory impressed the professors.

Demonstrate Mastery was the concept I had the hardest time with as a new instructor. What is mastery? It seems fairly subjective and probably varies wildly from instructor to instructor. However, since I lead my students out into the open waters, it is very important that they have mastered the skills in confined water. Else, it makes my job in the OW a lot harder.

For your information: During the Confined Water Dives, mastery is defined as performing the skill so it meets the stated performance requirements in a reasonably comfortable, fluid, REPEATABLE manner as would be expected of an(y) Open Water Diver. During my confined water session, a student will do all skills a minimum of 3 times and most skills at least 5 times.

If they cannot do it instinctively, they don't go on to the open water ... period.

This means they have mastered it at an Open Water Diver level. I can tell you that most of my OW students perform better than most "fun divers" when we load up on a boat and go diving.

So the answer to your question is .... YES!

 

[HowardE]

That sounds more like, "satisfactory completion" than "mastery"

 

[Thalassamania]

…
For your information: During the Confined Water Dives, mastery is defined as performing the skill so it meets the stated performance requirements in a reasonably comfortable, fluid, REPEATABLE manner as would be expected of an(y) Open Water Diver. During my confined water session, a student will do all skills a minimum of 3 times and most skills at least 5 times.

If they cannot do it instinctively, they don't go on to the open water ... period.

This means they have mastered it at an Open Water Diver level. I can tell you that most of my OW students perform better than most "fun divers" when we load up on a boat and go diving.

So the answer to your question is .... YES!

When is PADI coming out with the "Dictionary of Diving?"

 

[scubajcf]

I understand. I was a PADI instructor when they introduced the "dive today" philosophy.

I'm with you there.

I also agree that there are significan't differences between agencies. No doubt, a good instructor can make up for weaknesses in the standards but I don't think that excuses the weaknesses in the standards.

Unfortunately many instructors are a recent product of the same certification system they are teaching and aren't able to make up for those weaknesses so you can't count on that happening. It just becomes a situation of the blind leading the blind.

Thanks for the input. I am always nervous about agency zealots. It's great business for the agencies' to put their name all over everything. It's even better to have instructors become evangelists.

When asked, most naive divers repeat they are an agency specific diver. I am a PADI Diver, I am an IANTD Diver, I am a NAUI Diver. I would prefer they say, I am a diver who was trained (insert instructor's name here). He/She is the best!!!

The agency becomes irrelevant at that point. My brochures usually do not carry any agency logo on there and mention the agency names in one line only. Instructors offer the training, the agency is just a tool. I could jump on my soapbox here and start talking about specific issues with specific agencies, but I would just suggest that instructors figure out the variables between agencies and tailor programs specific to their clientele. That way they remain their clientele.

 

[Thalassamania]

Thanks for the input. I am always nervous about agency zealots. It's great business for the agencies' to put their name all over everything. It's even better to have instructors become evangelists.

When asked, most naive divers repeat they are an agency specific diver. I am a PADI Diver, I am an IANTD Diver, I am a NAUI Diver. I would prefer they say, I am a diver who was trained (insert instructor's name here). He/She is the best!!!

The agency becomes irrelevant at that point. My brochures usually do not carry any agency logo on there and mention the agency names in one line only. Instructors offer the training, the agency is just a tool. I could jump on my soapbox here and start talking about specific issues with specific agencies, but I would just suggest that instructors figure out the variables between agencies and tailor programs specific to their clientele. That way they remain their clientele.

Now we are in complete agreement. However, in order to tailor programs the instructor must wake up and identify the weaknesses. Permiting the agencies (any agency) to hide behind doubletalk and newspeak does not help that process.

 

[scubajcf]

Now we are in complete agreement. However, in order to tailor programs the instructor must wake up and identify the weaknesses. Permiting the agencies (any agency) to hide behind doubletalk and newspeak does not help that process.

I never thought we disagreed. I have read your posts before and have read your profile (impressive). I truly believe the instructor is ALL that matters. If you have an instructor that strives for mediocrity and satisfy the bare agency minimums, they are going to turn out subpar divers. No debate, no argument. Agencies are tools (not beating up on them) and should be used thusly and effectively. That creates great divers.

A footnote: Agencies should remember their place (as a support mechanism for the instructor), nothing more. Agencies who take ownership of the diver are in direct competition with the instructor. This can only lead to disaster!

 

[MikeFerrara]

I think it's time for a story.

After having dived on and off for a time without being certified, I decided that it was time to get certified. I got certified...then AOW, a bunch of specialties, then DM and the next thing you know, I was an instructor.

At the time, I had little reason to question the standards. I say, I had "little reason" because I did have some reason but hadn't connected the dots yet.

Some of those "reasons" that I didn't yet recognize...While I was a DM candidate I went for a dive with a newly certified diver, another DM and an instructor. The newly certified divers was overweighted, trimmed head up and had a buoyant camera that the instructor had clipped to her consol. The DM was way ahead of us and the instructor was above us having ear trouble. The new diver was getting a bit deep so I signaled her to watch her depth. When she stopped kicking to look for her consol she sunk like a rock and the fun started. That was my first time pulling a screaming scratching wild cat up from 65 ft.

Somewhere in the same time period, maybe a little before or a little after, I don't remember, my wife and I were on a night dive in a local quarry along a wall. My mask was leaking and fogging some so I decided to flood it, straighten it out and get it cleared. When I took a BIG deep breath to clear it...like we do when we're kneeling on the bottom, I shot up. Realizing that I was going up I blew and dumped. My wife followed me up but by the time she was headed up, I was headed down like a rock. Well, I landed in the silt but just decided that I had better stay there and just kneel while I got that mask thing straightened out. Once I did, I went looking for my wife.

My wife, who hadn't been diving as long as me but was AOW or rescue certified at the time had her share of similar incidents si I got thinking. I thought, why shouldn't a diver be able to replace a mask without having to be planted on the bottom? Even though I was a DM or inthe process of becoming one, I had never actually heard of anyone ever doing such a thing but it seemed like it should be possible. I was even starting to think it would be a VALUABLE skill. We spent the next dive doing all those beginner skills in shallow water but all while hovering. It wasn't that hard and didn't take very long but we came pretty close to getting hurt a few times and had gotten seperated LOTS of times before we ever even thought of giving it a try.

Then of course there were all the other courses that I DMed for where one diver was shooting up while another was getting buried in the silt but things were just starting to click. We would joke about how the class silted out the dive site but it never seemed to occure to anyone that it shouldn't be happening that way. ok, I'm a little slow.

continued...

 

[MikeFerrara]

Story continued...

ok, I go through an 8 or 9 day IDC. My course director did a good job of preparing me to pass the IE and he was master of knowing what had to be done to satisfy the standards and what didn't. He could get students through a class in record time and I was taught to do the same.

I got through the IE and I taught my first class through a local shop. I had 6 students in confined water with no help. The pool was new and the chems were off so we didn't have 5 ft of vis in the pool. It took me 6 hours to get the 6 students through the 5 CW water modules and I caught a bit of hell for being so slow about it.

I started teaching classes on a regular basis. My wife became a DM and she usually assisted me. I taught exactly by the book and, by any definition that I knew of, I did a fine job. However, OW dives were a mess and my wife hated to even get in the water with students. You know, the butt first descents, one diver shooting to the surface while another is getting down in the silt. I even had another guy who used to DM for me (he'd been around a while) give me a lecture on how you never want to stop an OW class...because if you stopped them, one would be shooting up while another dropping down and it would be a mess. He advised "Keep them moving".

Getting tired of having our hearts in our stomachs, we started to experiment with some things in an attempt to make the OW dives less frightening (to us). Maybe we did need to keep a class moving but why should we have to? Why shouldn't a diver in OW be able to hover anytime they weren't swimming? Why should the free descent in OW dive 4 be such a CF?

In the mean time we had continued our own training and after almost getting killed doing classes with technical instructors who were fine with doing all skills while kneeling, we eventually ran into some divers and instructors who had a little different take on things.

Now, the light bulb is coming on and things moved forward quickly. Once I could let go of the idea that whoever wrote the PADI standards knew what they were doing and started to apply what I now knew about what it takes to be able to do a slick job of diving, we were able to run a bunch of divers through the classroom and confined water and go to open water and have some fun diving with students who were actually able to dive without all the near death experiences.

I'll skip going into exactly what we did different for the time being but all that stuff is already scatered around the board. For now lets just say that niether our classroom sessions, CW or OW looked much like a PADI class. It did work though.

I will add that I think my early students were cheated. Also, by believeing the agency BS, I as well as those who assisted me were in many situations that none of us ever should have been in. With all the crap that happened, no one was ever seriously injured but that was just luck. Any one of those incidents had the potential of turning out much much worse. I am, in fact, aware of plenty of other incidents where students did get hurt. They weren't my students but they could have been. Again, just luck.