Holy ****, you must have had some real ***holes for instructors to be that angry.
I stand by what I said. The quote was "soften the blow". I guess it depends on how you interpret this, but too often I've seen that as allowing something serious to be trivialized, which does no-one any favors.
However, at no time did I say "rip him a new one". You are the one putting your anger at terrible instructors into my mouth.
Yea, I've had ****** ninja-wannabe-navy-seal instructors, and watched a few besides. I agree 100% that yelling and swearing and "ripping someone a new one" is not only terrible teaching methods, it almost never works.
We agree on a full debriefing, but it must be honest even if that does hurt feelings. Again, no need to be angry or rude or miserable, but honest. The fellow might not be here were it not for the actions of the other divers, and he needs to be totally aware of that fact. Ideally he should be mentored by the team to turn this into a really positive learning experience.
This post has been in my head since yesterday. I'm sorry if this is slightly off topic but I feel compelled to address this post again. I suppose mods will delete it for being off topic but I feel strongly that I have to speak my mind.
I would like to make it clear, although it has nothing to do with the OP, that my own technical instructors were very carefully chosen to AVOID this kind of thing. I don't want someone reading this thread to assume that my own instructors were idiots and avoid them because of this. I can recommend them all, everyone one of them....they were chosen to NOT be like this. I wanted to make that clear.
Sunnyboy did, however, correctly connect with the frustration I have about it. In my local area I see many instructors, even at the OW level, surfacing with students and "ripping them a new one". I'm frustrated about that. It is unnecessary, it is rude and it doesn't help the student at all! This is what I was addressing.
A few years ago I followed a GUE course that was being taught from the same dive centre where we were diving. On day 1 the students had to put their gear together. One of the students, who was gearing up next to me, did it all wrong. She put the wing backwards onto the backplate. I'm a technical diver and a PADI instructor so I noticed what she did wrong but felt it was inappropriate to help her because the GUE instructor was swaggering around and I thought he would object to help from "outside".
So I let her put the wing on backwards without saying anything.... the GUE instructor then also saw what she did and stormed up to her and said in a loud voice, "YOU MUST FOCUS!" He then walked away without telling her what the problem was. This has become a running joke among my friends. When someone makes a mistake we all scream at them YOU MUST FOCUS
At this point I intervened. I told her (conform the PADI approach) what she did wrong, how to do it right and how to avoid it happening again in the future. I was trying to help her. She thanked me and seem relieved but the GUE instructor's reaction was to forbid his students from talking to me for the rest of the week. They still talked to me but it was in the pub at night, where they were also forbidden from going.
This kind of behaviour is rampant among technical instructors. In my local area you actually have to work hard to find one who doesn't berate students for mistakes. There seems to be this assumption that if you help someone you are "coddling" them. The flip side is that the student can only "learn" by his/her own mistakes and they have to be left to figure out (a) what they did wrong and (b) how to fix it without any help from the instructor. I even see OW instructors using this approach with newbies.....
... and yes.... it makes me mad.... REALLY mad! It makes me want to shake certain instructors until their head comes off.
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