beester
Contributor
I have written about this phenomenon a number of times. For many tech instructors, explaining a teaching point and demonstrating it is "handholding," and they make it a point to say there is no handholding in their instruction. When you then fail to perform correctly because you did not receive that handholding instruction before you tried, you are then soundly berated for that failure, and berating is also perceived to be part of the "no handholding" philosophy. This is not something they do without realizing it--it is very much their intended instructional philosophy, and they are quite proud of it.
This makes the class an ordeal for the student, and it makes it much harder for the student to succeed. When they do finally emerge from that ordeal, though, they feel proud for having succeeded. They then feel a great sense of superiority over people who learned through handholding, and if they go on to become instructors, they will usually carefully imitate their earlier instruction as they deal with their own students. A number of years ago, education researcher John Goodlad showed that when they get into a classroom, teachers tend to teach their students the way they were taught when they were students themselves, even when they were taught in their teacher training classes to do it differently. I am sure the same is true of scuba instructors.
This is going off topic, but you and Diver0001 are making a valid point. I've been on both sides of the aisle so to speak. Communication breaks down if you are angry, are shouting or insulting, not only as an instructor teaching but also when you are criticising a diver.
I don 't need to defend GUE as such, but in my personal experience I've only seen it once with a GUE (fundies) instructor, who was doing the whole "gun ho" routine with a class of fundies students. Since I didn't know the GUE fundies instructor I went on my own business.
This has been my only experience like that within GUE. All my GUE courses (and I've done some) have been with different instructors because I feel every instructor has a slightly (or more pronounced) way of teaching. I think I benefit from different points of view on the same subject, that's why I tried to get as many different experts (instructors) as possible to teach me.
Of course there were instructors that I closely connected with because of common interest or look on life, there was 1 instructor who's personality clashed with mine. But all of them were very professional and although very very strict underwater were calm, responsive, criticising with detail so you could work on it and understood when the class had enough and needed a break. Nobody ever shouted at me or told me that I was a **** up. Some of those instructors I now call friends... that should say enough.
My motto when giving critique ... "kill them with kindness".