In almost ANY diving class, the instructor makes all the difference in the world and unfortunately from what I have read here and seen in the water, I believe that it is far too easy to become certified at many levels without going through a serious review of your diving skills in a variety of environments with most agencies.
Unfortunately, many divers (at all levels of certification) do not realize how bad they really are. I would suspect that many of them do not even care:upset: The majority of people on boards like this one are passionate about diving or curious about expanding their own knowledge and skills. Unfortunately for the sport, most divers who are once a year divers or who think that a basic C card is all you need to be a "diver" have absolutely no idea what a good diver really looks like nor do they know that they have received sub-par education.
It is sad that in other sports people look to "professional athletes" to role model what can be done. Watch Tiger Woods play golf, Michael Jordan play Basketball, Tony Hawk skateboard, Tao Berman kayak, Warren Miller ski movies etc. and you see just how far it is possible to advance your skills. Other than the GUE videos and classes which I would venture to say 99% of the diving world has little or no knowledge of, diving as a sport has not really demonstrated "world class skills" to the majority of people who are diving or intersted in diving.
If agencies, any agency, do not put any emphasis on skill development as a part of the certification process then it is no wonder that there are so many poor divers being created. Only the instructors who realize and recognize that these skills are important and who are able to effectively demonstrate and pass on these skills to their students will be training the divers we all want to dive with.
There are a great many threads and discussions on here outlining how the agencies class formats are adaptable to teaching many different skills and gear configurations. Perhaps we need to work together to change the emphasis of certification to include qualitative skills assesments beyond mask remove and replace and look at how we can help the divers we see who don't even realize that there is room to improve.
