Wow. You were right. I would not understand. I can not imagine myself purposely breaking standards and putting other people's lives at risk just to earn a living.
So the point seems to be that people are pissed off at PADI because resort managers misunderstand (purposely or not) PADI standards and the managers make it hard for you to say "no, I can't do that"? I guess I get it now.
Sheesh.
This is not new. This is not an unknown for PADI, either. Let's talk about a few other things the standards say. For every DSD participant, you must fill out a cardboard form that registers the student and gives them a temporary (week long) certification. You must buy this card from PADI (I'm going on 20 year old memories here) for a couple of bucks each. I would have burned through 2400 or so of these in a year, but the resort owner, in an effort to cut costs, decided to photocopy a registration card and use the photocopied card in the place of the actual registration card, and only use the real registration card in the event of someone telling us that they would be going on to the next island and would need proof of performing the DSD. A DSD participant can dive for a week following successful completion of a full DSD class without the classroom or pool portion.
Now, you are on contract to the resort. They provide you a place to live, a salary, and a plane ticket back and forth. They probably have your passport in the hotel safe. You are in a foreign country and you may or may not have a work permit, you are a newly minted instructor and you just want to please everyone. You want your guests to have a great time, you want to teach folks to dive. You go to the resort manager and you say "well, it's a standard. I can't do the DSD without a $2 card". The resort owner offers that you can always buy the cards yourself if you feel so strongly about it. Make your choice.
That's the reality of instruction. To say "Wow, just quit" shows the same arrogance that PADI showed in this case by dumping this instructor without stating cause. This situation has been a problem since forever, PADI knows it's a problem and haven't come up with a solution to correct it. What possible solutions are there? Well, they could require PADI instructors to only teach through a shop. A PIRA shop would have extra pull with a resort to ensure standards are met. PADI could actually send QA inspectors around to QA independent instructors. They could show up at shop A and tell the owner "I'm here to observe your next introductory lesson", be it classroom, pool, or OW. I'm sure there are another hundred things I haven't thought of that PADI could do to increase the quality of instruction, and a single audit of a dive shop would spread through the industry like wildfire.
But PADI doesn't have to do any of those things, because they can spend $800k now and again and buy their way out of lawsuits. It's probably cheaper to pay off the grieving parents and not actually have a quality program than it would be to send their training and regional staff out to observe a training session or 2. I don't believe that PADI cares about quality in any case. I watched my wife's IE. Every candidate drowned their victim during the rescue by not protecting the airway. Every student. I wouldn't have passed a single one of them. The examiner had to teach hover to a candidate during the examination. Again, the examiner had to teach hover to a candidate during the examination. That candidate passed the examination, by the way.
I understand that this case didn't happen in a resort. The point I am making (Or trying to make) is that the standards are one thing, and reality is a whole different thing. The reality of the situation is that sometimes standards get stretched and broken and thrown out the window, because there is no one to enforce them, because PADI doesn't have the will to do so.
---------- Post added November 14th, 2014 at 11:02 AM ----------
Standards say you can take four so by God you will if you want to keep your job. Doesn't matter if they lied on the medical as in this case, can't really swim a lick, have never had a mask on let alone a scuba rig. You will have them in the open ocean with no assistance should the shtf and get them back in time to meet their van to the ship, airport, camel caravan, etc.
The instructor will often never see the paperwork. It's usually completed in an office somewhere by a person who has no dog in the fight. The instructor finds out how many men, how many women. Then he pulls a 63 for the women, an 80 for the boys. Then he grabs the regulators. Athen he has an inkling of their sizes, so he grabs a wetsuit and appropriate BCD, except the other instructor has a class, so there aren't enough small BCDs, so he has to put one woman in an ill fitting medium. The class takes priority, because those people are paying, so they get first pick of the rental gear and they use it all week. The DSDs get what's left over. The first time the instructor meets the DSD participants is when they arrive in the classroom.
My guess would be that the instructor in the boy scout case never saw the medical, it was either filled out and presented to some office at the BSA event or given to the counter person at the dive shop when getting gear. Most likely at the BSA event, as those folks aren't (maybe?) as well trained as a PADI instructor to make sure the paperwork is right.
