Some Comments after Nitrox Certification

[The Chairman]

peepeetwo effohtwo ayteeay to you too, pal

(i speak spanish and i have no clue what that means, so it must be italian)

I my Russian professor always used the same quip when we happened to mangle the language: "Sounds like broken Iriquois to me!" Boy, he sure said that a lot!

 

[OHGoDive]

... by the posts that I have been reading regarding what should/should not be taught and how/how not to teach it. It seems to me, again, as a novice diver, that an awful lot of the posts (including the original post to this thread) seem to follow the theme of - "The course that I took did not satisfy my personal desire for knowledge, therefore it was inadequate". These posts are invariably followed by two schools of thought, 1) Is so!, and 2) Is not!

So, are the courses inadequate, or are they merely insufficient for some peoples specific experience, education, expectations? My child's 3rd grade science class would be inadequate for a university graduate (hopefully), but are fine for him, and they accomplish their goal of teaching science to a 3rd grader.

PADI lists on their website as the objectives for their nitrox course:

Learn to analyze cylinder contents.
Plan enriched air dives using tables and dive computers.
Safely increase your no stop time.

These seem pretty straightforward, and this is what I am expecting to be able to accomplish when I leave the course. It doesn't say anything about understanding of the theories behind the concept, so I don't think that I'll find the class inadequate if my instructor does not go to great lengths to educate me in it. I imagine that I will want to know more about it (and already do know more about it, since I've been peeking at the theories, computations, and information available here and elsewhere), because I think that it is interesting and relevant to my experience in diving, but, if the goal of the class is merely to safely increase my no stop time (as a recreational diver), didn't they teach what they advertised?

 

[H2Andy]

So, are the courses inadequate, or are they merely insufficient for some peoples specific experience, education, expectations?

very good insight. the bottom line is as follows:

1. should you be taught the "minimum" you need to do something safely? or

2. should you be taught more than that, so you can have a deeper understanding
of what you are doing? this would entail longer, more expensive classes.

back to the bottom line:

shops don't make much money on classes. they make their money on selling
equipment. agencies know this. they don't want to allienate shops who may
switch to another agency. so, the agencies have tended to streamline and
shortern their courses. why?

quick, cheaper classes will attract more people who then go on to buy
equipment and make the shops money.

longer, more expensive classes will "weed out" the number of students who
will take a class, resulting in less divers certified, resulting in less equipment
sold, resulting in less profit for the shops.

that's basically the bottom line. if you follow the money, the pressure is on
quick, cheap certification, so tons of divers can get certified and buy
equipment.

now, is that for the benefit of the divers? hardly.

 

[carbon]

peepeetwo effohtwo ayteeay to you too, pal

(i speak spanish and i have no clue what that means, so it must be italian)

Andy, this is my favorite post of yours yet!

Carbon :rofl:

 

[OHGoDive]

quick, cheaper classes will attract more people who then go on to buy
equipment and make the shops money.

longer, more expensive classes will "weed out" the number of students who
will take a class, resulting in less divers certified, resulting in less equipment
sold, resulting in less profit for the shops.

But, is that actually the reason, more dollars for shop owners? Couldn't an equally valid reason be that better equipment, more research, and newer technologies are making the risks more manageable, and thus require less training to accomplish safely?

Alas, I seem to have framed the crux of the argument for myself, haven't I?

 

[The Chairman]

Now Andy,

You're beginning to sound cynical here! There is no evidence that the agencies are nearly as evil as you make them out to be.

It is our predisposition as humans to villify those who would disagree with us. This is the basis for racism and jingoism. The dive community is no different in this regard and we all too often see utlerior motives assigned to an agency where there is no real basis to do so other than our disapproval of their methods.

Often in making our case we use emotionally charged terms such as "safety" and "competence" and then never show any evidence or even causality.

If every student wanted to be taught in precisely the same way, we would not need any more than one agency. This goes for instructors and their teaching methods as well.

 

[The Chairman]

But, is that actually the reason, more dollars for shop owners? Couldn't an equally valid reason be that better equipment, more research, and newer technologies are making the risks more manageable, and thus require less training to accomplish safely?

Alas, I seem to have framed the crux of the argument for myself, haven't I?

But it is always better to couch your opponent in terms of their evil desires to destroy all that we stand for: Truth, Tables and the American Way! (cue patriotic music in the background)

 

[H2Andy]

But, is that actually the reason, more dollars for shop owners?

more money for the industry, yes. it is a business. it's there to make a profit.
it's not unreasonable to expect it to maximize its profit.

You're beginning to sound cynical here! There is no evidence that the agencies are nearly as evil as you make them out to be.

no, not evil. just pragmatic, good business people. as i said, they are
business people. it's not surprising that they would try to maximize their
profits.

hey, their business model is what it is, and it speaks for itself.

 

[OHGoDive]

more money for the industry, yes. it is a business. it's there to make a profit.
it's not unreasonable to expect it to maximize its profit.

Well, I can certainly understand a business or industry wanting to make as much money as possible. But, isn't it potentially counterproductive, assuming that the business or industry wants to stay around, to willfully cut corners on safety, when it's their own customers who they're putting at risk? Certainly, I'd be much less inclined to step on a commercial airline whose planes repeatedly fell from the sky, no matter how cheap and quick their flights were.

As a new diver, how concerned should I be? Am I putting myself at a much greater risk than I believe by following the published guidelines of my training agency? If so, what, if anything, can I do to mitigate the risks, short of not diving at all?

 

[TSandM]

I don't think you need to be worried about your safety if you follow the published guidelines of your training agency. You may not understand the "why" of what you are doing, but if you do what you were taught, you will most likely be okay. The agencies are as successful as they are precisely BECAUSE what they teach you is basically safe. (The qualifiers are because I have some personal opinions about buoyancy control and how it is taught and to what standard, but the book part of diving is taught well enough, if rather by rote.)

I always tend to think that the more you know about the why of the rules you are taught, the better you will understand how to apply them and when they may not be completely applicable. But not everybody works that way, which is why protocols exist, and why, when they are formulated, they have to be made as simple and idiot-proof as possible.