drew52:You have your opinion and I have mine. While I agree, to some degree, with a large amount of what most people say I just think you guys all to easily blame one particular agency. Personally I have found that most of the divers I come across, irrespective of which agency, have skills that leave a lot to be desired. However here is were my experience differs from yours. Most of the poorly skilled divers I see have not followed any agency recommendations. Most were trained anytime between 1980 and present. Most have not dived in 3 to 25 years and now want to dive. Most do not want to pay for a refresher, as recommended by most agencies, but rather just want to go diving. Most are proud to tell you how much diving they have done. This ranges from 5 - 15 dives spanning over 3 - 25 years all over the world. Most should not be diving but do any way. These are the people I usually see with bad dive skills. In fact they usually have no dive skills. Now it is difficult to say whether this is training based or not but I am assuming it isn't. After all some of you seem to think training was much better long ago. If this is the case these people trained in the early eighties can't really blame their training.
The divers who are recently certified, who practice and dive on a regular basis are usually OK. They may not be perfect and a lot could practice trim but they aren't the liability you make them out to be.
The only reason we're blaming PADI here is because we're discussing PADI standards. I'll bet we could get a copy of the standards of some other agencies and do a number on those too. PADI has set the pace for the most part.
I don't see any sense in discussing what happens to a divers skills during a period of inactivity unless we benchmark where they were before going inactive. If I want to see the effectiveness of training, I want to see the diver on their last training dive.
Lets forget the divers who haven't dived in 10 years and go out and watch some AOW classes in progress. When we see divers sitting on the bottom to tie knots or climbing a rope up from a deep dive like they were making love to a fire pole, we can discuss their skill level and what's being taught in relation to what the agency standards require.
Lets go watch an OW dive 1. When the divers are crawling through the muck, we can discuss the fact that they can't practice buoyancy control and trim because they've only done CW 1 and buoyancy control isn't even introduced until CW 3.
Then we can move on to discuss why that is...the dive today philosophy...do a DSD and get mod 1 credit. You will never see a trim or buoyancy control performance requirement for dive one. They can't because it would blow that whole "dive today" thing right out of the water.
This is the PADI system. If someone really understands all the pieces and how they fit together and they think it's a good idea, more power to them. Too often though, people try to make it sound like something it isn't, isn't intended to be and probably never will be.
These things are the agencies design and they are the agencies responsibility.
My personal opinion is at some point people today should start taking personal responsibility for themselves. If you haven't dived in a while get in the pool, pay someone, find a buddy who dives often, whatever just get some practice in before going off to the lake, quarry or tropical dive vacation.
No doubt the individual is responsible for maintaining or improving their skills. again, though, if your skills aren't good, there isn't anything to maintain.
Divers believe what the agency and their instructor tells them. Sometimes it doesn't work out so well, It's still their ultimate responsibility because no one is twisting their arm to dive or stopping them from doing more research. That does not relieve the responsibility of the agency or the instructors though.
The thing people need to realize is that, in most places, it's legal to sell a lousy product. If people want to buy it, it's their problem. Dive training is a product so the rule is buyer beware.
BTW, I was in a PADI update right after they introduced the dive today philosophy. There was a whole room full of instructors who were mad as hell and they came right out and told PADI that students were going to get hurt. They were right although, most commonly the injuries are minor squeezes and people just go home thinking they have water in their ear. LOL
Anyway, those instructors were pretty much labeled as malcontents and otherwise ignored. I was kind of new at the time and was all GO PADI. Looking back, I should have been listening to the people sitting behind me more than to the guy up in front. It would have saved me a lot of trouble and near disasters later on. I might not have had to re-invent the weel. I could have just spun around in my chair and asked some questions.