The Philosophy of Diver Training

[JeffG]

First of all, we don't "fail" students; we keep teaching them until they meet the standard.

po ta toe - po tat o

In their OW dives, students must participate in the planning, and they must log the dives. If the dives are at altitude, they must include the altitude corrections. That means they must make that adjustment to complete the requirements of the standard.

or use a dive computer (as per Kingpatzer)

So one instructor can fail a student for not knowing the tables or just say..."Use a computer and you will be fine" and both be within standards.

Cool how that works.

but some will say that instructor B is "bad"...(but he is within the standards)

Making those adjustments is absurdly easy, so to talk about the potential for failing a student for not being able to do it is ludicrous.

It is the internet after all. LOL

 

[JeffG]

Which can be said for EVERY agency, n'est pas?

sure....They all suck then.

 

[The Chairman]

Nope. It had nothing to do with their training or their standards. It had to do with a situation in which a special forum was created by the previous owner of ScubaBoard.

Walter, I created that forum, not King Neptune. I wasn't the owner at the time, but he was seldom around and I along with Spectre maintained the Board in his absence. I am as loyal to now as I was then... but I don't mind helping you change for the better and I am sure the converse is true. I don't mind helping DCBC either, but he has to want to improve (see the need) in order to begin the process and see me as being other than merely arrogant. As I learned a long time ago: I won't hold my breath!

 

[The Chairman]

sure....They all suck then.

I disagree. Just as with any operating system for your PC, they have ways that they can be exploited. While it might appear that some agencies are not exploitable it's simply not true. The more popular ones get the brunt of people trying to exploit them (Microsoft and PADI, respectively). The more obscure an agency is, the less likely someone will exploit them or gripe about how they are exploitable.

We use Linux to run ScubaBoard. Some think that Linux is not exploitable, and they are the ones that normally get hacked first! Is it better than Windows Servers? I think so, but there are some great sites that run on Windows Servers. No, I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I am certain that they are there.

Just like an operating system is as good as it's SysAdmin (Yay Dallas!), a Scuba course is only as good as it's instructor. PADI and all of the other agencies provide a platform for an instructor to work from. Some understand one system but not another. That doesn't make the other system "bad", now does it? Good instructors learn how to stop malicious exploits of their agency's standards. Lazy instructors merely lament how bad they are since they can't make them work.

 

[Kingpatzer]

So one instructor can fail a student for not knowing the tables or just say..."Use a computer and you will be fine" and both be within standards.

It is a requirement to plan the dive. The tool used to plan the dive is not particularly important. What is important is being able to safely plan a dive.

Now, the argument can be made that knowing dive tables is like knowing how to do basic math. And that using a computer, like using a calculator, makes the process easier, but one needs to know how to do the math first in order to be able to "double check" the calculator.

I am not sure I buy that argument. I studied quite a bit of math in school, and I can't tell you the last time I didn't use a calculator to do all but the simplest problems. And I don't sanity check the calculator by doing calculations in my head. I just do the problem more than once to make sure I'm getting the same answer. And I know plenty of people who sucked at math, can't do simple math, and somehow don't ruin their lives because they use a calculator.

And regardless of the view about the necessity of understanding tables, any contention that one must be able to use tables to safely plan a dive is demonstrably false. Heck, for planning square profile dives, my current computer is significantly more conservative than any table I've ever seen. What I need to know is not how tables work, but how to correctly use my computer.

 

[JeffG]

I disagree.

It was just a joke.

The more popular ones get the brunt of people trying to exploit them (Microsoft and PADI, respectively). The more obscure an agency is, the less likely someone will exploit them or gripe about how they are exploitable.

I agree.

 

[Jax]

I'm not assuming, I'm guessing and freely admitting my guess may have missed the mark. I made that guess because that was part of the very long post you quoted and the rest of it seemed pretty clear that they came from standards when he was a PADI instructor and from conversations with people at PADI headquarters. He clearly stated things may have changed and was looking for current infiormation on those points.

There is a statement I've heard;

It's not what you know; it's what you think you know but you don't know that will get you in trouble.

DCBC is making some pretty absolute statements. Above, you say that it "seemed pretty clear that they came from . . ."

1 -- I am not clear where anything he says come from; there is nothing cited, and therefore it is opinion, or hearsay.

2 -- If the statements came from standards from when DCBC taught, and by his own words that was 18 years ago, then the applicability to today is near nil due to extensive changes in the culture and emotional climate for the current generations.

3 -- The full basis of the opinion is post hoc ergo propter hoc, where the quality of the diver is blamed completely on the agencies and current culture and climate are simply dismissed. An analogy may be made to the current education system and its endless debates over "it's the systems' fault" instead of seeing the steady decline being a combination of factors.


Post hoc ergo propter hoc, Latin for "after this, therefore because (on account) of this", is a logical fallacy (of the questionable cause variety) which states, "Since that event followed this one, that event must have been caused by this one." It is also sometimes referred to as false cause, coincidental correlation or correlation not causation. It is subtly different from the fallacy cum hoc ergo propter hoc, in which the chronological ordering of a correlation is insignificant.

 

[JeffG]

It is a requirement to plan the dive. The tool used to plan the dive is not particularly important. What is important is being able to safely plan a dive.

Any contention that one must be able to use tables to safely plan a dive is demonstrably false. Heck, for planning square profile dives, my current computer is significantly more conservative than any table I've ever seen.

Standards are a means to have a consistent program that create a predictable outcome.

Everything you have posted leaves such huge gaps that there is no consistency could ever be maintained.

Gee....Makes you wonder where the comments about standards comes from. LOL

Basically, you guys are saying that no 2 instructors are the same and their criteria for passing can be different. So much for standards. LOL

 

[The Chairman]

It was just a joke.

So I thought, but it did allow me to make a salient point.

I agree.

Will wonders ever cease?

 

[Walter]

Walter, I created that forum, not King Neptune. I wasn't the owner at the time, but he was seldom around..

I believe you, but that was before he went MIA. I had several long telephone conversations with him about that particular forum. If memory serves that was 2001 - 2002 and he was missing most of 2003. Anyway, I was just trying to help you with a reference.