Thal:
Wow. Where do I begin to try to counter your misinformation. I can't believe how far off base you are about the facts.
I worked with John Cronin and Ralph Erickson constantly (the founders of PADI) and I know for a fact they were very concerned about PADI Standards at all times. I think you are being very unfair to John's memory by saying what you have said when he is not here to defend himself. So I guess this is one point we will have to continue to disagree about.
I am still trying to understand why you think what I am saying is a "revisionist PADI party line." I was there, physically and mentally working for and with PADI during that time. As far as being an instructor with them my number is 2141 which means I was there in the beginning. I have no reason to rewrite history about what happened, I just want people to know the honest truth.
You are right about none of the other training organizations making sweeping changes or any changes when PADI came out with their Open Water Diver course. They all badmouthed it as often as they could and claimed it would turn out terrible divers. They also said that because we actually had a video that helpled teach the class, the instructor would just turn it on and leave and never teach the class themselves! However, once they saw how successful it was and how well it worked in training new divers they all could not move fast enough to develop their own multi media training systems. Remember, up until then most instructors had virtually no training materials to us in class to help the people learn. It was just an instructors who would talk and talk and talk.
NAUI was the next organization to try to develop a similar program. They contracted with Jeppeson who makes many of the flying courses today. Jeppeson came up with a really beautiful diver training system with the audio visual, the books, everything. NAUI for some reason said they did not want it and they would develop their own. I thought they were crazy, but what do I know. So they refused it and guess what? A tiny and new organization called SSI came in and took that program and made it the SSI program and that is when they started to really grow. Interestingly enough, at the time the head of SSI was John Hardy who had been the head of NAUI before that. It's amazing how all the diving organizations were intertwined back then.
The Underwater Society of America was a joke as far as I am concerned. Not as an individual organization but as a group who were willing to work with others. I was present at a number of meetings between the USA and other diving organization and they were obstructive at every turn. If they had have been more of a leader then there would have been no need for the NSTC (National Scuba Training Council) to have been formed in the first place. We can talk at another time about why the NSTC had to be formed to protect the diving organizations.
I don't know what you mean about people getting certified by PADI through "shop certifications". During the time we are talking about PADI did not have dive shops as members. We had not started that program yet and as far as I know NASDS was the only organization that had dive shop members. Once again, if we were accepting dive shop instructors as PADI instructors it was because they were already certified as instructors with other, recognized diver organizations that trained and certified them.
Yes, we did accept military divers. We recognized that they had extensive training in many cases and we felt we could recognize that training. I think that was the right decision to make.
Here we go again. You say that "before PADI cleaned up its act". What do you mean. We never had to clean up our act. We were constantly innovating and developing newer and better ways to promote diving. At each turn every other organization would hang back or outright badmouth what we were doing until they saw that it worked well and then they all would follow our example. The PADi Dive tables were another example of this. We took on a huge amount of liability just to develop the first accurate dive table for sport divers and no one else would even consider doing that.
I agree with you that NASDS had the first dive shop centered training program, but you have to ask yourself why it failed and NASDS is nowhere to be seen today. The program was linked almost exclusively to ScubaPro shops. The instructors could only teach for the shop they were working for and they could not teach anywhere else. I am not 100% sure about this next statement, but I think that if they left that particular dive shop they could not teach at all. To me the system was way to restrictive in many aspects. I am not saying that the actual training system was no good because I know it was a good training system. The problem was that the whole philosophy of how and where and when it was used was flawed to the point of it finally going out of business. There have to be some good reasons why it failed and PADI did not.
PADI learned from watching NASDS and any other system we could find. Then we crafted a system that worked better than any other system in the history of diving. That's why we now train over half of the divers in the world each year. You can argue with that fact all you want, but I don't think you are going to tell me that over half the divers trained in the world each year are taking an inferior system when they have a choice of where they go and what they do.
I laugh a little when I hear you saying that through PADI the Dive Industry was able to control how divers were trained. Nothing could be further from the truth. One of the biggest problems that PADI had on an every day and ongoing basis was the fear by the Dive Industry that PADI was going to develop their own line of diving equipment and start selling it to our divers while we trained them. They were terrified of this, especially ScubaPro (back to what NASDS was actually doing). We could never convince the diving manufacturers that we were never going to start making and selling a line of PADI dive equipment. It's amazing because PADI was literally exploding the number of people coming into diving and the equipment manufacturers were direct beneficiaries of this, but they still were afraid of what PADI might do. It didn't help that John Cronin, the President of PADI was also the head of US Divers (the equipment company), but John kept the two separate allt he time.
This problem got even worse when we developed our own diver training materials, especially the books and video's. There was an incredibly large "food fight" between the manufacturers to make sure that their particular brand of diving equipment was worn by the divers in all the pictures we were using!! It was going to be fantastic free publicity for them. So if you really study all the diving equipment the divers are wearing in all the PADI materials you will see that they are using a lot of different brands. So I am not in any way buying your argument that through PADI the Dive Industry was controlling what was being taught to divers. NASDS was the only organization that even came close to doing that.
As I recall, Lee Sommers and I and some others attended PADI's first Course Director training course in Racine, Wisconsin. I had known Lee from NAUI. I was one of a group of people who were very active in developing what is now the standard techniques for diver rescue. I would see Lee each year at the NAUI ICUE (International Conference on Underwater Education) when I would be demonstrating some of the rescue techniques. He is a good man. I didn't realize that he was certifying instructors for both organizations at the same time as I was doing it.
The problem arose because over course of several years I converted all the FUAI (Federation for Underwater Instruction in Israel) instructors to PADI. I was actually the Course Director for the FUAI at that point because I would train all the instructors using a PADI Instructors Course and then they would give them their certification also. This worked well until the Israel had to give the Siani back to Egypt. The UN troops moved in to occupy the Siani until the transition and the General in charge of all the troops said the UN would pay for them to get certified as divers if they wanted. The problem was that he was a NAUI man and said they could only take NAUI courses. There was not a NAUI instructor in Israel at the time and the FUAI contacted me about the problem. They wanted the money. So I flew back in and did a NAUI crossover for all my PADI instructors so they could qualify to train the UN troops. When I finished, I flew directly to the ICUE in California with 65 folders which contained the paperwork for the Fuai Instructors. I walked into the NAUI Course Director meeting that was taking place. They took the folders from me, thanked me for the work, and then told me I had to leave the meeting because I was also a PADI Course Director and they did not want me there (that is gratitude for you). That is when the rule was developed by both NAUI and PADI that you could not train Instructors for both diving organizations. As you can imagine, PADI now not exactly "tickled pink" that I had crossed their members over to NAUI.
I don't have any answer for your continued resistance to the fact that all the diving organizations are doing a good job developing and maintaining diver training. I also feel strongly that it is the individual instructor using the system that will make it an exceptional calls or just one that meets the bare minimum standards. I have no way to change your mind so I will have to agree to disagree with you.
You are contradicting yourself when you say diving accidents are low because diving is so easy to learn. If that is the case then why did you say before that it was PADI's fault that diving accidents were so high in the 1970's? I agree that diving is a realtively easy sport to learn and I have seen some amazingly stupid things take place and the people involved came out the other side in one piece. I do feel that diving has the potential to kill someone very fast if they do not have good training and if they do not develop good skills on an ongoing basis. This is where I feel the diving organizations have done such a good job because they lay the foundation in each and every diver when they begin. This is also why I believe in continuing education training.
As always, it is great debating with you. For those of you who don't know, Thal had contacted me about setting up a separate Thread where he and I will continue our ongoing debate about history of the diving universe. He is going to set it up and hopefully give all of us, myself included the details. I think discussions like this are extremely beneficial to all of us and I look forward to it.
Wow. Where do I begin to try to counter your misinformation. I can't believe how far off base you are about the facts.
I worked with John Cronin and Ralph Erickson constantly (the founders of PADI) and I know for a fact they were very concerned about PADI Standards at all times. I think you are being very unfair to John's memory by saying what you have said when he is not here to defend himself. So I guess this is one point we will have to continue to disagree about.
I am still trying to understand why you think what I am saying is a "revisionist PADI party line." I was there, physically and mentally working for and with PADI during that time. As far as being an instructor with them my number is 2141 which means I was there in the beginning. I have no reason to rewrite history about what happened, I just want people to know the honest truth.
You are right about none of the other training organizations making sweeping changes or any changes when PADI came out with their Open Water Diver course. They all badmouthed it as often as they could and claimed it would turn out terrible divers. They also said that because we actually had a video that helpled teach the class, the instructor would just turn it on and leave and never teach the class themselves! However, once they saw how successful it was and how well it worked in training new divers they all could not move fast enough to develop their own multi media training systems. Remember, up until then most instructors had virtually no training materials to us in class to help the people learn. It was just an instructors who would talk and talk and talk.
NAUI was the next organization to try to develop a similar program. They contracted with Jeppeson who makes many of the flying courses today. Jeppeson came up with a really beautiful diver training system with the audio visual, the books, everything. NAUI for some reason said they did not want it and they would develop their own. I thought they were crazy, but what do I know. So they refused it and guess what? A tiny and new organization called SSI came in and took that program and made it the SSI program and that is when they started to really grow. Interestingly enough, at the time the head of SSI was John Hardy who had been the head of NAUI before that. It's amazing how all the diving organizations were intertwined back then.
The Underwater Society of America was a joke as far as I am concerned. Not as an individual organization but as a group who were willing to work with others. I was present at a number of meetings between the USA and other diving organization and they were obstructive at every turn. If they had have been more of a leader then there would have been no need for the NSTC (National Scuba Training Council) to have been formed in the first place. We can talk at another time about why the NSTC had to be formed to protect the diving organizations.
I don't know what you mean about people getting certified by PADI through "shop certifications". During the time we are talking about PADI did not have dive shops as members. We had not started that program yet and as far as I know NASDS was the only organization that had dive shop members. Once again, if we were accepting dive shop instructors as PADI instructors it was because they were already certified as instructors with other, recognized diver organizations that trained and certified them.
Yes, we did accept military divers. We recognized that they had extensive training in many cases and we felt we could recognize that training. I think that was the right decision to make.
Here we go again. You say that "before PADI cleaned up its act". What do you mean. We never had to clean up our act. We were constantly innovating and developing newer and better ways to promote diving. At each turn every other organization would hang back or outright badmouth what we were doing until they saw that it worked well and then they all would follow our example. The PADi Dive tables were another example of this. We took on a huge amount of liability just to develop the first accurate dive table for sport divers and no one else would even consider doing that.
I agree with you that NASDS had the first dive shop centered training program, but you have to ask yourself why it failed and NASDS is nowhere to be seen today. The program was linked almost exclusively to ScubaPro shops. The instructors could only teach for the shop they were working for and they could not teach anywhere else. I am not 100% sure about this next statement, but I think that if they left that particular dive shop they could not teach at all. To me the system was way to restrictive in many aspects. I am not saying that the actual training system was no good because I know it was a good training system. The problem was that the whole philosophy of how and where and when it was used was flawed to the point of it finally going out of business. There have to be some good reasons why it failed and PADI did not.
PADI learned from watching NASDS and any other system we could find. Then we crafted a system that worked better than any other system in the history of diving. That's why we now train over half of the divers in the world each year. You can argue with that fact all you want, but I don't think you are going to tell me that over half the divers trained in the world each year are taking an inferior system when they have a choice of where they go and what they do.
I laugh a little when I hear you saying that through PADI the Dive Industry was able to control how divers were trained. Nothing could be further from the truth. One of the biggest problems that PADI had on an every day and ongoing basis was the fear by the Dive Industry that PADI was going to develop their own line of diving equipment and start selling it to our divers while we trained them. They were terrified of this, especially ScubaPro (back to what NASDS was actually doing). We could never convince the diving manufacturers that we were never going to start making and selling a line of PADI dive equipment. It's amazing because PADI was literally exploding the number of people coming into diving and the equipment manufacturers were direct beneficiaries of this, but they still were afraid of what PADI might do. It didn't help that John Cronin, the President of PADI was also the head of US Divers (the equipment company), but John kept the two separate allt he time.
This problem got even worse when we developed our own diver training materials, especially the books and video's. There was an incredibly large "food fight" between the manufacturers to make sure that their particular brand of diving equipment was worn by the divers in all the pictures we were using!! It was going to be fantastic free publicity for them. So if you really study all the diving equipment the divers are wearing in all the PADI materials you will see that they are using a lot of different brands. So I am not in any way buying your argument that through PADI the Dive Industry was controlling what was being taught to divers. NASDS was the only organization that even came close to doing that.
As I recall, Lee Sommers and I and some others attended PADI's first Course Director training course in Racine, Wisconsin. I had known Lee from NAUI. I was one of a group of people who were very active in developing what is now the standard techniques for diver rescue. I would see Lee each year at the NAUI ICUE (International Conference on Underwater Education) when I would be demonstrating some of the rescue techniques. He is a good man. I didn't realize that he was certifying instructors for both organizations at the same time as I was doing it.
The problem arose because over course of several years I converted all the FUAI (Federation for Underwater Instruction in Israel) instructors to PADI. I was actually the Course Director for the FUAI at that point because I would train all the instructors using a PADI Instructors Course and then they would give them their certification also. This worked well until the Israel had to give the Siani back to Egypt. The UN troops moved in to occupy the Siani until the transition and the General in charge of all the troops said the UN would pay for them to get certified as divers if they wanted. The problem was that he was a NAUI man and said they could only take NAUI courses. There was not a NAUI instructor in Israel at the time and the FUAI contacted me about the problem. They wanted the money. So I flew back in and did a NAUI crossover for all my PADI instructors so they could qualify to train the UN troops. When I finished, I flew directly to the ICUE in California with 65 folders which contained the paperwork for the Fuai Instructors. I walked into the NAUI Course Director meeting that was taking place. They took the folders from me, thanked me for the work, and then told me I had to leave the meeting because I was also a PADI Course Director and they did not want me there (that is gratitude for you). That is when the rule was developed by both NAUI and PADI that you could not train Instructors for both diving organizations. As you can imagine, PADI now not exactly "tickled pink" that I had crossed their members over to NAUI.
I don't have any answer for your continued resistance to the fact that all the diving organizations are doing a good job developing and maintaining diver training. I also feel strongly that it is the individual instructor using the system that will make it an exceptional calls or just one that meets the bare minimum standards. I have no way to change your mind so I will have to agree to disagree with you.
You are contradicting yourself when you say diving accidents are low because diving is so easy to learn. If that is the case then why did you say before that it was PADI's fault that diving accidents were so high in the 1970's? I agree that diving is a realtively easy sport to learn and I have seen some amazingly stupid things take place and the people involved came out the other side in one piece. I do feel that diving has the potential to kill someone very fast if they do not have good training and if they do not develop good skills on an ongoing basis. This is where I feel the diving organizations have done such a good job because they lay the foundation in each and every diver when they begin. This is also why I believe in continuing education training.
As always, it is great debating with you. For those of you who don't know, Thal had contacted me about setting up a separate Thread where he and I will continue our ongoing debate about history of the diving universe. He is going to set it up and hopefully give all of us, myself included the details. I think discussions like this are extremely beneficial to all of us and I look forward to it.
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