Peter, that is just how it is done. I have no problem with including briefings and debriefings, but by your accounting system my 100 hour course comes out more like 200 hours. What is supposed to be measured is contact hours in an instructional mode, I will happily grant you that most of open water days has some learning and teaching component, even lunch, however ... unless you are prepared to rewrite "the rules" which would make comparison to other programs meaningless, that's the way it works and you don't count arrival on site to departure from site ... you just count assembly, disassemble, briefing, debriefing, and in-water activity time.
---------- Post added November 19th, 2012 at 02:07 PM ----------
They may not have, but in the end I decide what passes and what doesn't. If I'm not happy, I will ( and do) keep working with the student until I am happy. If I end up with a student that doesn't want to put in the effort, tough for him or her, because I teach for fun, and if I'm not having fun class ends... It's that simple...
PADI sets their minimum, I set mine...
Then you are in violation of PADI Standards, it's that simple ... not that I, personally, give a damn.
What we keep trying to say, DCBC, is that PADI may set minimums, but, for example, there is no limit to the amount of pool time you MAY provide a student. Most shops don't provide too much, because it's their biggest expense, but some do quite well -- the one Peter and I work through, for example. It's nine hours in the pool, which we have figured out how to make the most efficient use of; no one spends ANY time in our class sitting and waiting while other people do things. It's nine hours of real in-water work, and our average student can clear their mask in midwater and share gas without losing buoyancy at the end of it. No, their kicks aren't perfect, but they can descend and get horizontal and stop before the bottom of the pool.
I wish we had more time -- more dives -- for the OW portion, because I agree with you that diving in cold, murky water is simply DIFFERENT from the tropics. I think we could take any of our average students and put them in OW in Maui and have them excel, but most of them struggle horribly at the beginning in OW. But Peter's OW dives aren't the bare minimum, either, and since the students do only the skills they HAVE to at the line, the majority of the time on the dives is actually DIVING, and then pausing to execute a skill. Dives have no set time, and continue until either the students reach gas limits, or start to get unmanageably cold. This is another place where an instructor can make the class better.
I guess what I'm saying is that, unless you firmly believe that there is no way that you can produce a remotely safe OW diver with four OW dives (and there are days when I feel that way, myself) it is not the agency that is the problem. It's the shops and the instructors, and the economics of dive training.
I agree with most of what you say, but by my standards it would be a very, very rare individual whom I would consider a safe Open Water Diver after only four dives. Do keep in mind that my standards are the standards developed by the people who invented scuba training, modified ever so slightly for gear changes. The agencies are only part of the problem, but they basically pandered to the shops, defined what the instructors were to be and defined the economics of diver training as a race to the bottom based on misstatement and miss-analysis. It would be sort of like if you permitted dressage judges to decide on the best horse without either show jumping or cross-country. You'd wind up with horses that are great at a laundry list of individual moves, but no grasp of what it meant to accomplish anything but that parade ground showmanship, no test of how the horse would hold up when pushed to the limit across the country-side which seems to me to be the more important criterion.
---------- Post added November 19th, 2012 at 02:36 PM ----------
Interesting thread, I have a few things to add now that I am caught-up:
...
By definition EVERY course (scuba or otherwise) must have limits on what is taught. In addition, allowing an instructor unlimited freedom to add to a course would destroy the concept of the notion of standards. I somehow doubt that a NAUI instructor could add/require his students to do Open Water Class in doubles and a stage with dives to 300 feet.
You would be partially correct, if for no other reason than the depth limits that have been established for recreational diving and open water classes, however, it would be permissible to run an open-water course in doubles from the get-go. The concept of minimum standards does no violence to the idea of having standards, it is just a different approach that requires that the agency trust the judgement of the instructors it certifies.
Where the line(s) are drawn are inherently arbitrary and some people (Wayne and Thal for example) decry where PADI has drawn those lines (as is their right). However, to imply that every instructor must be permitted to draw her own lines is silly.
I find it silly to permit someone to draw arbitrary lines period. Lines should be drawn for good, responsible, reasons, by competent instructors who are on scene, know the students, know the area and are specifically responsive to the students' needs. Leaving such decisions to some functionary who is removed, not only in time, experience and resposibility but who may be half a world away strikes me as worse than "silly."
Some things that you think are arbitrary, are just translations whose origins have been forgotten or conveniently misplaced. Here are a few examples: Many current instructor programs include (included?) a 1/4 mile swim. Why 1/4 mile? Is that just an arbirary choice? Why not 1/3 of a mile or a 1/2 mile? The 1/4 mile swim come from a translation of the distance to swim out and around Scripps Pier. It was translated into a pool distance for early LACnty entry-level course swim tests. Similarly a surface dive down to 15 feet mirrors the depth at the end of the Scripps Pier. The NAUI and LACnty skill (still used inthe swim test for many science classes): 50 yards on three breaths, mimicked swimming in (or out) through the break at the beach next to Scripps Pier, most divers would have to pass through three breaks in the process. All of these skills were (are) standard in the Scripps program; were moved to the early LACnty entry level programs, and wound up in many agencies' instructor courses today. Hardly arbitrary if you know the history.
I think Mr. Richardson wrote it well -- PADI standards/materials create the skeleton and it is up to the individual instructor to put on the muscle and skin. How different, really, is that from every other agency?
I think that Drew did an good job of designing a program for an average situation that could be run with minimal hazard by a sub-par instructor ... no mean feat. But that flies in the face of one of my core teaching beliefs, highest quality possible, hand built training for actual individuals. The "skeleton" that you refer to is, in my view, the wrong skeleton for optimum diver training. It may be a great way to prevent harm from coming to the public at the hands of poor instructors, who must make barely average divers out of average people in the shortest possible time, at the least possible cost ... but that's not what I'm even remotely interested in doing. Good instructors might use the PADI system to better effect than that, but in the final analysis I can not see how a competent instructor's students would benefit from the increased restrictions.
Yes, there are differences in what skills are required to be "mastered" (or whatever word you wish to use), but really, other than buddy breathing and unresponsive diver recovery, what differences are there for the basic open water diver amongst the various national/international agencies?
A prime issue is the rather rigid order that PADI requires skills to be taught in. Yes there is some latitude, but other agencies permit skills to be taught in any order that the instructor thinks best. I can teach my course under the aegis of, for example, NAUI or SEI, but I would have to make major detrimental changes to it were I required to conform to PADI standards. I would submit that the mastering of free diving skills would be another that set of skills that should be added long before buddy breathing and unresponsive diver recovery.
... For example, having 6 or 8 people swim to corners of the pool, with no tanks on and then sharing a tank with one regulator at each corner with 1 or 2 other people...
and what would be wrong with that if the people are properly prepared and sufficiently skilled?
Since you have specifically mentioned NAUI, I'll try to address your questions. You are correct in-that a NAUI Instructor cannot require an Openwater Student to dive doubles to 300 feet. As we both are aware, this is a ludicrous suggestion, as no one would say that such training is in the best interests of the student. An NAUI Instructor can teach buddy breathing, unresponsive/submerged diver recovery/rescue, shooting a bag, increasing the water evaluation requirements for any diving environment where it would be prudent for the safety of the student. The big difference (as I see it) from an instructor's perspective, is that he can require the student to be tested on this material and the student must show mastery (or whatever you would like to call it) as a condition of certification. The PADI instructor may add certain material, but cannot require a student to be proficient in any of that material and must certify the diver if PADI's standards are met.
That is, indeed, a major difference.
It is the same difference... standard or minimum. PADI states that you HAVE to meet the standard. It does not say that it is not allowed to exceed that standard...
That is incorrect, you can not require a student to "exceed" the standard as a criterion for certification, adding fluff that can not be tested is permitted, but one may not "exceed" the standard, except in an Orwellian sense.
Nothing critical about that...
In all discussions on the quality of the courses, I miss one really critical item... And that is the quality of the student.
I personally cannot deliver a good course to a student that is not committed to following the course. If I teach a class with 2 students, one committed, and one who is not, I will get two different reviews...
I agree, you can lead a student to water but you can't make him dive ... but, through pre-course testing and qualification I will make every attempt to assure that I am not teaching the student who is not committed, life is too short for that sort of crap.
