It has to be both - training and 'doing'.
Any training course should provide you with the skills and knowledge to do a particular activity. However, only by doing that activity do you then become competant at it.
Anyone fresh out of training, who has not yet had the opportunity (
or subsequently not taken the opportunity) to engage in
utilising that training cannot be considered competant at that activity. They have not
applied that knowledge and become proficient in using it.
Specifically with scuba diving, all entry-level divers should equipped with the skills and knowledge to operate as complete, functional divers,
independant of professional supervision. However, the overwhelming trend is for those divers to hop from course to course (
under the supervision of an instructor) or to only go on escorted fun dives (
under the supervision and guidance of a divemaster).
The greater majority of scuba divers - regardless of the number of years they have dived, or the number of dives they have completed, have
never been in a situation where they were the most experienced diver in the team and had taken
complete responsibility for themselves.
When some of these divers subsequently enrol on professional level courses, their lack of experience
applying the training, they have previously recieved, becomes instantly apparant. As such, the DM course has to achieve the
dual goals of training them to become a
basically competant independant diver AND a
dive leader. As such, the effectiveness of that training course is
diluted and the end product is considerably
weaker.
SailNaked is correct to ascertain that simply raising the minimum requirement of dives for entry to the course is somewhat pointless. What matters is that the diver has done a sufficient number of
independant dives to have
applied the training they have recieved on previous courses and developed the ability and confidence to dive effectively without supervision and guidance.
As such, only a pre-course assessment of ability would determine and guaranee that a diver had gained the requisite knowledge and experience for DM training.
However, when one looks at the training pre-requisites for entry on a DM course (
OW, AOW and Rescue) we can see that it
only accounts for
12 dives. Leaving the diver with only
8 dives to be completed before they could enrol on DM training. There is
no way, regardless of the divers personal ability, that 8 dives (
even of high quality and independant of supervision) could supply them with sufficient opportunity to have applied and ingrained the skills they had learned on courses. In addition, such little in-water experience will not have provided them with sufficient variables and events to have developed their overall breadth of
experience,
judgement, and ability to recognise problems and engage effective
problem-solving skills to deal with them.
As such, the current dive pre-requisite is ludicrously low. It allows a ratio of training dives to independant dives of
3/1. A more appropriate training/independant ratio would be
1/8 (
hence 96 dive overall requirement...rounded up to 100 dives!).
100 Dives for DM training. I agree with that!
