Jason B:
Weird, as a school teacher, we have students learn stuff by reading all the time....
Let me add that I'm not suggesting someone not take the class, I'm just suggesting that the thought of not being able to learn by reading is BS. Maybe better written materials are needed, but learning can certainly be accomplished by reading.
Hi,
I agree w/you Jason, that some learning will be accomplished by reading. But in many cases the written word cannot do the material the justice it deserves and the message becomes distorted.
As an instructor for GUE that has been involved w/at least 20+ of these courses from it's early inception as a workshop, I can say from experience that it is
extremely rare that what is read and interpretted by the students via written word is the exact same message regarding the same material given in the class by the Instructor. Also, this misintepretation sometimes leads the prospective student down a path of learning material which actaully hinders the students progress in the class. IOW, as many folks have said already, don't go training for the class and ingraining an incorrect technique/practice that will make learning more difficult in the course.
Without the 'hands on' aid of the Instructor and the interpretation and feedback from the Instructor, the material's real message can sometimes be difficult to process accurately. All of this taken into consideration, I think you'll see that the written material and DVD's available from GUE do a good job of giving the info that will help the students in the courses by giving them a background/foundation to start the real learning. So, by all means, do start reading before the class is taken. But I think Tollie was speaking from experience when he said that reading and learning are two different things and that is what I'm trying to explain. At least this was my experience when I first began reading the ramblings on the Net back in the mid 90's concerning DIR. The written word really does not convey the whole picture well and can be misleading at times.
This is also points to why many folks contend that the people "labelling" themselves "DIR" that have never taken a course or trained w/GUE or the WKPP divers, but only read the Net material or (now) maybe a book, are more than likely/usually missing large portions of the "DIR" philosophy in thier actual diving.
It's more than equipment, more than "no deep air", more than "don't dive w/unsafe divers"....but to try to reduce the philosophy to words is really doing it an injustice.
This of course, is JMHO.....
Dive safe!
Best Regards,
brando