PADI IE (Right wing instructor thoughts!)

[Liquid]

Neil- Im with you and Walter all the way, i just didnt want to say it myself.

Submariner-I dont know if you misunderstood what I wrote or didnt, but i meant that PADI's share of bad instructors is RELATIVELY the largest.

One more thing:

I do HAVE to comment, that I belive that the big majority of instructors on this board are good instructors.
why?
becouse you care enough to argue about it!
It means you have feeling about it, that you CARE. The most important thing about an instructor is that he cares and feels for his trade. It means you pain at the sight of what is happening to the scuba world. So, it might be wierd coming from a conservatist right winger like me, but (damn how to say it in english!?) HURRAY for all you instructors here that care enough to argue and debate those issues!!!

The sad things, in my opinion, is that most of the instructors won't even bother reading this forum if it was infront of their face.

 

[Butch103]

I cannot comment on the above statement other than as a new diver you really wouldn't know a good instructor from a bad. Meaning other than the instructor's personality and patience, how could one know the quality of instructor??
There are good and bad Drs, teachers, carpenters etc. How does one know who is good or bad. I agree with the thought perhaps you should have a minimum dives with before being allowed to apply or begin the instructors course. even a set number of years with a minimum number of dives in each year being necessary. All said and done you can regulate to death and still some knucklehead will become an instructor and a bad one at that. I think the only way to judge the instructor is to have a council of his or her peers to judge them at the end of their course. This would be on presentation,knowledge and gernerl teaching ability. Also , and I appreciate this is a pipedream, this council be made up of instructors from the various organizations; PADI, SSI, NAUI and others. One set instructors course mandated by all organizations. Upon completion of the instructors course the new graduate could work for whatever organization they choose, and teach using the system. Complicated I know, but the most consistant program. My 2 pennies worth. Butch

 

[Blargh]

Originally posted by cmay
Hello guys,

<snip>

... I suggest you look at an Undersea Journal sometime, PADI kicks people out on a regular basis.

*cough*

That *would* suggest something about the **average** qualitiy of their instructors, now wouldn't it?


Oh, and kudos to WWW for saying out load what seems to be semi-mentioned on this board rather often

 

[turnerjd]

Originally posted by Walter
Without picking on any one agency, I'll take the opposite position and state that in my opinion the overwhelming majority of instructors I've had dealings with are incompetent.

WWW™

Having just come back from a weeks diving in ther mediteranean (off the south coast of France) I would have to say that the situation is the same here in France!

The centre I was diving with had 5 instructors. I would have to say that 3 of the 5 were inadequate, 1 adequate, and the final one was good.

There was no real agency bias, they were all FFESSM and PADI qualified.

Makes you very sad when you see that.

Jon T

 

[Se7en]

Gotta come out in support of Walter and Liquid.

After being coerced into doing PADI AOW after ten years of diving (Was told that I shouldn't be allowed to do certain dives as I was only OW certified... apparently a few hundred dives and 30 odd logged in the 30 to 40 m range isn't as good as 15 dives all up including AOW cert...) I duly subscribed for an AOW course with a few newly certified friends. Figured that I'd at least get to play with 'the wheel' something I'd never bothered with before.

Went through the PADI manual - normal propaganda. There's stuff in there I disagreed with, but was just told I was wrong, becuase it was 'written in the book'

Multi level dive: Told again that you can't work out multilevel dives with tables - that the only way to do it is with the wheel. Was still told this even when I showed the instructors how to do it with tables... and got the same result as them for any scenario they could come up with.

Deep dive: Diving in a site I'd dived a few times before - dive plan was to meet at the bottom (33 m). My buddy and I were first in, and descended quite quickly to avoid the current. Others apparently had some difficulty descending - which resulted in us sitting on the bottom waiting for quite some time. Met up, did the skills stuff, and my buddy and I were the last indicate to ascend - by which time we were into deco time. No problem, we both had a heap of air, and were ascending up a nice wall which I like spending time on anyway - but I'd pointed out to the instructor that my buddy and I had 5 or so minutes of bottom time up on everyone else as soon as she arrived. Perhaps she was narced
Computer cleared on the way up, but did a long safety anyway - which we were questioned about once back in the boat. Writing up the log books, we weren't allowed to use the actual bottom time we did, but rather had to put in the 'official' bottom time of the group...

Night dive: Plan was to do some exercises, then 'just follow me around' ('me' being one of the instructors). We were all in buddy pairs, with one instructor - not in a mass group.Unfortunately 'me' suffered from full bladder + dry suit - and took off at high speed from us during the dive, while we were poking along a reef. No stress - where we were diving all you had to do was head south and you'd hit the beach - but not quite what I was expecting
(Oh - also saw a 7 foot grey nurse, in about 5 m vis, so that made me happy with the dive reguardless)

So... paid $400 so I could continue doing the dives I'd been doing for years - and still haven't seen how the wheel works

Not an extensive survey... but I support the 'most instructors are bad' vote

Mike

 

[divewasi]

As a former PADI instructor, I too have grappled with the same thoughts as expressed here in this forum.

PADI has arguably done more for the promotion and advancement of sport diving over the past 25+ years than any of the "older" training agencies. That is presumably why the other agencies have remained somewhat limited in their influence throughout the world.

Unfortunately, they appear to me to be caving in under the sheer weight of their success. Dive operators at travel destinations complain of the difficulties in finding qualified (and safe) divemaster/instructors with experience to staff their programs. The proliferation of "90 day wonder" instructors are dangerous to themselves and their students and, unhappily, deleterious to the advancement of our sport.

It may be that the marketing concepts advanced and used so successfully by PADI in the past have outlived their usefulness, if the objective is to grow and advance our sport. Twenty-five years ago there were circa 1700 diveshops in the United States. Today in our enlightened times, there are about 1700 diveshops. Not the kind of growth that benefits the industry as a whole. The slices of the pie are just getting smaller.

The recreational scuba industry needs no more 90-day wonders that have provided little to the sport but to assure that the training agency gets its instructor fees for several years, and the "instructor" gets bragging rights to carry an instructor card in his or her hip pocket.

We need competent instructors who love the sport and are dedicated to educating the best recreational divers that they can, not just to create myriad new instructors to generate cash revenues for the training agency. A motivated and well trained diving public is what will grow and maintain the sport of scuba diving.

The future of the recreational diving industry will belong to those who can recognize and conform to the changing market forces and define a better way to advance our sport.

Who knows? Maybe PADI will get their act together before it is to late for them. Otherwise, there are plenty of others ready and willing to take market share away from them.

Please allow me to apologize for the soapbox. This thread has just hit me in a sensitive place.

 

[Butch103]

even with PADI how does one become a 90 day instructor ?? There are a lot of courses to get through in 90 days. They msut be jamming through their courses one after another ??


And then do they not have to go into a special instructors course ??



Butch eace:

 

[divewasi]

Hi Butch103,

Sorry, 90 day wonder is a military euphemism for an officer in the military who has been commissioned with little more experience than 90 days of knife and fork officer candidate school.

I apply it here to mean instructor level divers who have had little diving experience other than the training dives that it has taken to get them through an accelerated instructor training program.

There are schools in the southeast that do offer instructor training programs that take little more than that.

 

[turnerjd]

Originally posted by Butch103
even with PADI how does one become a 90 day instructor ?? There are a lot of courses to get through in 90 days. They msut be jamming through their courses one after another ??


And then do they not have to go into a special instructors course ??



Butch eace:

90 day is too unrealistic!

3 days OW
3 days AOW
3 days Rescue
10 days DM
10 days IDC
2 days IE

31 days Total!! (and somewhere in the region of 25 dives for those courses)

The problem with this is the 60 dives necessary for DM and 100 for OWSI. So, like a nice livaboard we get the students to do 5 dives a day (yes you can do 5..... PADI insists on a minimum of 15 mins for it to be a dive....) so for the extra 75 dives necessary, we get our people to do about a months diving (could be done in as little as 25 days)

Hence, it is possible for you to qualify in less than 90 days.

To further emphasise the point, there is a place in the UK advertising OW to instructor in one month. All you have to have at the start is the OW, 100 dives, and have been certified for more than 6 months....... They do all the rest of the courses non stop!

Jon T

 

[Liquid]

It's so sad but so true.
I belive that an instructor has to have some experience with different sorts of envirments and conditions, if he is to teach about it (class 5, for example, deals with that)and a lot of instructors had all of their dives in one place, that has the conditions of a bath tub. The are teaching students how to deal with wave and currents, while they never experienced it themselves!

Se7en-

It sounds like the instructor you had was unprofesional, none responsible, and cares more about covering his ass than teaching properly. a disgrace to the trade.
The thing with the bottom time is the most anoying.

But let's summ it all up- it all ends with one thing. money. Agencys want to make it, shops want to make it, and, even, god forbids, instructor like to have a nice salary.
But becouse of the competition, and amounts of instructors in the market today, the pay is lousy. So the good instructors just move on to other ocupations, I know I am worth much more than what I get payed as instructor. that's why I quit it as my profesion and do it only on hollydays.