The Chairman
Chairman of the Board
Strange? Possibly, but accurate nonetheless. Remember: you're trained by the instructor and not the agency. The instructor chooses the agency while you choose the instructor. Agencies give us the minimum standards that we have to teach to and most of them are quite similar. They are written in a way that allows us to meet those standards in many different ways, so most instructors add to their courses, many without realizing it. Taking the same course, under the same agency from two different instructors could easily yield two wildly dissimilar experiences and skill sets. Here's an obvious difference: kneeling. No agency requires that students learn while kneeling on the bottom of the pool, and yet it is a very common practice. Instructors who make their students kneel are adding this to their class. A tiny number of us see how kneeling is so very detrimental to learning trim and buoyancy, so we teach the entire class in proper trim off the floor. Results? To date, I've never had a student who has injured their ears after their class. They come out of class with superior trim and buoyancy to the point that they are ready to head into a cavern class. I've had other OW instructors, some teaching for the same agency, ask me what course I was teaching when they saw me in the pool. I'm rather proud that my OW class doesn't look like most of the others. My entire course is about removing fear from the Scuba experience by putting the diver in control.This is a strange answer to the question of what C-card training prepares someone to do. “It depends on the instructor” gives me no way to make any risk-informed decisions about what my training prepared me to do.
So yes, there are some differences between the various agencies. I only teach OW through NASE because they encourage me to teach neutral as well as require no vertical CESA in OW. However, the differences between the instructors for any particular agency are far more extreme. Attitude, knowledge, skills and more all make these instructors different from each other. I'll post this again: You're trained by the instructor and not the agency. The instructor chooses the agency while you choose the instructor. Choose your instructor wisely. They'll have already chosen the agency that serves them best.