Things Scuba Instructors teach that are either bad or just wrong.

[Polarorbit]

Just recently my wife and I were at the dive shop indoor pool practicing skills for an advanced tech class. We were setting up our equipment and as I opened my tank the SPG glass shot off hitting my wife, who was bent over setting up her gear, in the ass. She jumped up with a scream knocking the fully clothed instructor into the pool.
I thought I ruptured something internally from laughing so hard that snot was coming from my nose.
So yes they can blow off. And yes I did end up sleeping on the couch that night. Making me laugh just thinking about it.

I've never seen it in 43 years of diving but that scenario is to funny. I would pay money to see that.

 

[Polarorbit]

He is talking about the things he has time to add to the learning with the additional time he has with the students. That will be instructor-specific.

I mentioned the shop I was in that went all online after seeing how well it worked. In that case, the Director of Instruction (not the same guy as the first one) asked us all to make a list of the stuff we taught in addition to the required learning. He went through that list for each instructor and made a list of what he thought was most valuable so that each instructor would add that material.

There is a fine line, though, between adding useful material and overloading the student with stuff they don't need to know. When you add too much unnecessary stuff, stuff the student can learn later as a more experienced diver, then you risk interfering with the learning process and causing the student to forget the important stuff they really need to know.

As a PADI and SSI instructor, I like eLearning if done well. It allows the students to cover the bulk of the routine material on their own time and then I can focus on the extra that I can add from my experience.

 

[Polarorbit]

I just remembered an interesting example of an instructor/agency teaching something wrong. I am going to be vague as Hell so that no one recognizes who I am talking about.

The first day of class, we were handed a textbook and told to read it by the next day. The instructor proceeded to lecture us on key materials from the first half of the book we would be reading that night. In one instance, he told us emphatically how a certain skill needed to be done, no matter what other fools may say.

The next morning, as class began, I brought up the fact that the textbook said the exact opposite of what he had told us in class. He looked at me as if I was absolutely nuts, and then he sat down and looked at the textbook. And he looked at it some more. And he looked at it some more. Eventually he looked up and agreed that the textbook did indeed say the opposite of what he had said. He told us to ignore the textbook and do what he had said.

Here's the problem: our instructor wrote the textbook.

So was he wrong when he wrote the textbook, or was he wrong when he told us to ignore the textbook?

I find that more humorous as a college professor than a diver.

 

[Polarorbit]

The quarter turn back when opening the valve on a tank. Still see it taught, drives me nuts. Outdated, irrelevant and dangerous!

Old Habits Die Hard

Make it your standard practice to gently and completely turn on your air. If you’re an instructor, consider not teaching students the quarter-turn back.

dan.org

 

[Polarorbit]

I’ve never actually heard to anyone who had this happen to them, but I was taught (as an OW student and all the way through instructor) to point the glass side down or away. Interesting either way!

Agreed. I've never seen it happen, but it seems like a low-cost way to eliminate the possibility of glass in the face. I don't understand why anyone would say it is wrong. Is it wrong to say don't use your cell phone while filling your gas tank? I don't believe there is a single recorded incident of a cell phone igniting a gas pump. However, I'm willing to wait a couple minutes for my phone call in order to eliminate the possibility.

 

[Polarorbit]

Buddy breathing with a panicked buddy is already quite troublesome... Adding the BCD control in your mouth is definitely NOT for me, sorry.
I want to give a standard reg to my buddy with a reasonably long hose, so we can stay at proper distance. And I want to breath from a top-notch reg. So I always carry two identical high performances second stages, fully interchangeable (and usually fed by two independent first stages). I do like an Air-2 as an additional backup, but it will never make me happy enough to renounce to one of my two standard full-performances regs.
I happened to need to give air to other divers a number of times, and sometimes I needed it from my wife (actually just two times, but they were stressfull enough).
When I was working as instructor and divemaster, I did employ two first stages and THREE second stages, one of them with a long hose and mounted "wrong", on my left shoulder, so it was correctly oriented for the buddy to which it was planned to be donated. I was also using a larger tank (15 liters steel) so that I always had enough air to help some client (they had just a 10 liters steel, so it was easy for them to run out of air)...

I learned in the dark ages when we only had one regulator (and no SPG, just a J valve) and buddy breathing was true buddy breathing. PADI = donate alternate; SSI = donate primary. I don't like Air-2 but it's not really much different than the tech diving approach of donating your primary. The main issue I have is that it's difficult to control buoyancy while breathing on the Air-2 for your ascent. I also don't like the AL i-3 since I've had student have dangerous buoyancy control problems with it. However, like anything else, if you know your gear and practice, it should be fine. I just don't recommend them for new divers. Learn the standard rig first and then try new things.

 

[Polarorbit]

I wonder how many recreational agency instructors would refuse to allow primary donate/bungeed second configuration in OW since it’s not considered “proper” by the book in current training?
It would make the regulator sweep kind of silly and the “triangle” would no longer be relevant.

SSI has no problem with it and I use that configuration for my classes.