NAUI versus PADI

[RainPilot]

Used to? When did they drop it? I retired as a NAUI instructor only a year and a half ago, and this standard was part of my classes right up until I quit teaching ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Sorry Bob (and Tom) I just meant "used to have when I was an instructor but I've been out so long I have no idea any more" but darn autocorrect....

 

[The Chairman]

Fortunately I worked for an agency that recognized that the instructor knows more about their local conditions than people living someplace else who may never have dived in conditions like that. My agency trusted me to keep the best interests of my students in mind, and allowed me to not just teach those skills, but require my students to achieve a certain level of mastery in them before handing them a c-card. I would not have wanted it any other way.

Interestingly enough, I bet most instructors can say this about their current agency. We've listened to the propaganda of our respective agencies for too long about how bad the "ptj

I'm curious as to why the need to destroy the video? What is there to hide?

Privacy. There's no need to post a video that might cause shame to the student. If I video a student, I give them the video and they are allowed to do anything they want with it.

I would like to discuss this sentiment a bit more...

Like taking so many things (that aren't) as PADI bashing, I did not suggest that you don't know what you are talking about.

• What constitutes a bash?
  • Is PADI the only victim?
  • Can any criticism be considered a bash?
  • Can any comparison be considered a bash?
  • Why would we want to silence legitimate critics or differing points of view?
• Can we disagree without taking it as an attack?
  • When does a clarifying statement or counter point become a disagreement?
  • When does a disagreement become a criticism?
  • When does a criticism become an attack (bash)?
  • Do we need to assign intent for any of this?

 

[BDSC]

If I video a student, I give them the video and they are allowed to do anything they want with it.

Exactly! Why not offer the student the video. I would think a student would love to be able to show it to their friends and say, "Look at where I was when I started and look at where I ended up." Or if they didn't pass, they take the video home and see where they need to focus for the next try. If you give them the video, it can only be used to embarrass them if they decide to do so. Giving them the video might do some good. Destroying it does no good at all.

 

[stuartv]

The video is not usually used to show how great you are. It's showing that you are doing something wrong, typically a flaw that you don't recognize. It's often kind of embarrassing.

Policy is that it's destroyed. GUE takes instructor violation of standards or policy very seriously.

None of that explains why I can't have a copy of the video if the video only shows me.

 

[stuartv]

Exactly! Why not offer the student the video. I would think a student would love to be able to show it to their friends and say, "Look at where I was when I started and look at where I ended up." Or if they didn't pass, they take the video home and see where they need to focus for the next try. If you give them the video, it can only be used to embarrass them if they decide to do so. Giving them the video might do some good. Destroying it does no good at all.

I like ALL video of myself. Video where I look perfect (should such a thing ever happen) is cool. I would enjoy knowing I do get it right occasionally. But, I like the bad video of myself even more. I want to see that I'm screwing up and exactly how. I want to be able to watch it again and compare it to video later to see if I have improved.

And I have no problem showing it (the bad) to other people. I'm not proud. And I have no interest in having other people think I am better than I really am.

 

[The Chairman]

And I have no interest in having other people think I am better than I really am.

I love this sentiment. Awesome attitude. Thanks.

 

[tbone1004]

A class such as tbone's would take all the fun out of diving although I am sure I could complete the skills.

why does that course take all the fun out of diving? That's all done in the pool, and who says those skills aren't fun? Remember though, these are all college kids. Which means that things like the ditch and don becomes a competition to see who can get the highest score. Things like the swim/kick become a race to see who can beat them back. The regulator drills are pretty much just rude and I don't think anyone actually likes that, but once they figure that out, they get to do stacked drills where they swap everything except their bathing suit, while buddy breathing, to a diver who is kicking on top of them while doing laps in the dive well. That does actually become quite fun. They also get quite a bit of "play" time in the pool where there is nothing in particular that they have to do, just get comfortable and do what they want to do for an hour. Practice whatever, work on trim, doesn't matter, just play time, and they get that in open water as well.

Once in the quarry for OWT, those skills have shown us that they can be trusted to basically execute dive plans on their own. First dive we have to crank out a skills checklist because NAUI says that we have to, but the next 3-4 dives are navigation dives where they only see us if something goes seriously sideways.
The buddy teams have direct supervision, but it is from above them with as little interference as possible, typically only when they violate some rule that we have, or they need some compass intervention. Even if they get hopelessly lost, we just reach down and adjust their bezel to a new bearing and they are expected to recover from that error.
They are responsible for actually going diving. VERY few divers ever get that experience in open water training which is usually just follow the instructors around. We are training self sufficient divers, if you follow the agencies courses to the T, you can't say that because the simple fact is, they don't train fully functioning divers that are capable of planning and executing their own dives with no one but their buddy. They're trained to be under some sort of supervision. We have a very low dropout rate after the class and there are quite a few that come back for many years to volunteer with the program.

 

[george_austin]

Piece of cake compared to what we did in the pool for my 1970 LA County course. We still had the complete doff and don of all equipment. Remove all equipment and place it in a pile, surface, and with a single breath, descend and put everything back on. It was always harder in the old days

Haha - yes it was. I liked the part "We don't rent wetsuits to kids nor do we have any in your size so bring whatever you have for the ocean work next week" - that was Laguna Beach, California in February and I'm very glad I was much younger.
If that was happening today it'd only be a matter of time before someone's mother filed a complaint with the LBPD as well as the federal civil rights bureaucracies and NAUI / PADI. The instructor would be publicly shamed and burned at the stake for refusing someone's "kiddo" their "right to be safe and comfortable"

 

[Lorenzoid]

None of that explains why I can't have a copy of the video if the video only shows me.

Well, we had been PM'ing about the GUE video because I felt it was a bit off topic, but okay ...

As I said, maybe GUE doesn't want people to post videos all over Youtube that purport to show "GUE divers" or what a GUE class/student is like. I can totally understand not wanting their name attached to an informal poor-quality video that was taken only as a training aid for a particular student. Sure, they could have the student sign an agreement not to use GUE's name on the video, but they could never enforce that, and so it's simply a lot easier to delete the video immediately so that nobody has a copy.

 

[BDSC]

Remember though, these are all college kids.

So is it hard to get into classes now? When I was at NC State I signed up when I was both a Soph and a Jr and could never get in. Never tried as a senior but maybe I should have. It was a very popular course. Just didn't know if it's still like that.