Can you become a well trained instructor while staying solely within the PADI curriculum?
Of course you can. Not only can you become a well-trained instructor ... but you can turn out well-trained students while staying solely within the PADI curriculum ... or that of any other agency, for that matter.
A great deal of it boils down to how much effort you put into becoming that instructor. Are you someone who demands a lot of yourself? Or someone who wants to skate through with just the minimum? Are you someone who puts effort into becoming a good diver before signing up for your instructor training? Or someone who goes out and sits on a platform for 20 minutes at a time to "get your numbers up"? Are you someone who looks at agency requirements as a ceiling or a floor?
The curriculum isn't as rigid as some folks make it out to be ... not even for PADI. "Teaching extra" doesn't always entail introducing skills that aren't on the agenda. Often the difference isn't the skill itself, but how it gets taught. The agency ... PADI or otherwise ... specifies that a skill must be "mastered". What does that mean? For some instructors it means you demonstrate it to the student, they mimic what you did, you check it off as "mastered" and move on. For other instructors, "mastery" means they want to see a certain level of comfort and smoothness in the skill before they consider it accomplished. This may require a student to clear their mask multiple times until it looks effortless.
Which diver is better trained? Both instructors will have stayed solely within the PADI curriculum.
Another example ... like all agencies, PADI specifies a minimum amount of in-water time for a given class. But they do not specify that you must get out of the water when that number is reached. So one instructor sticks to the minimum ... while another keeps his students in the water, either doing skills or touring, until air or student comfort dictates that they need to end the dive.
Which diver is better trained? Both instructors stayed solely within the PADI standards.
And another ... one instructor teaches all skills to students while kneeling. Another instructor demonstrates and has the students perform the same skills while hovering.
Which diver is better trained? Both instructors stayed solely within PADI standards.
There is a misconception that the standards impact the quality of training. They do not. The standards define WHAT must be taught. The instructor determines the degree of control and comfort that constitutes "mastery".
I have a friend who is a PADI instructor. The day I met her we were sharing a dive site ... I was training a DM candidate. We were doing some mid-water drills when, below me, three divers swam past ... one in the lead, two swimming side-by-side behind her. All were looking lovely in the water, gliding effortlessly and frog kicking ... not stirring up a speck of silt. On surface interval I asked the other instructor what class she was teaching. To my surprise she said Open Water. I asked when PADI started teaching frog kicks in OW. She said she didn't teach them ... the students saw her kicking that way and started doing what she was doing ... so she kept them in the water a while and let them practice it.
She stayed solely within the PADI curriculum ... and simply by being a good example, provided the students an opportunity to learn something very useful for the conditions in which they were diving.
A lot of the criticism may come from people who took longer and more comprehensive courses. Many of those courses were offered through schools or government organizations. If those courses were offered commercially they would be higher in cost than the standard OW class and likely many fewer people would take them. Instead you have a fragmented curriculum that is broken up into many bite sized pieces. In the end they are offering what most of their customers want.
It's definitely true that more in-water time usually means better training ... but not always. The time must be used to good advantage ... a longer course that still doesn't get students off their knees, or teach them good buoyancy skills, is nothing more than just a longer course.
In-water time matters ... the water is where you learn how to dive. But you still need someone who can help you learn good habits, who can provide a good visual example of what you should be doing, and who manages that time adequately to allow the student to take advantage of their time in the water.
It always gets back to the instructor. If you teach to the minimums, you'll produce minimally-trained divers. But there's nothing in the standards ... PADI's or anybody elses ... that says you have to teach to the minimums ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
