There are thousand of things related to recreational scuba diving that are seldom mentioned in a basic OWD course.
Many reasons for this.
The course has a limited amount of time. An OWD course cannot last 6 months.
The audience is variable. There is people that absorbs knowledge like dry sponges, and there is people that need a lot of time to assimilate basic concepts.
Also people with technical background can easily understand the physics and mechanics of scuba, but people with no tech background need a lot of time and practice to understand those same basic concepts.
There is people very, very interested in the course and in scuba, and people that comes just because they were told or has nothing better to do, and people in between. Some of them will dive often, some will never dive again after the checkout.
People requires time to process all the information and the implications of that information received. You cannot overwhelm them with concepts and information because many of them will overflow.
Pools are not like open sea. In open sea instructors can do drills at 6 meters where buoyancy can be kept better than at 2 meters depth if you do not want the students knee in the pool bottom. It's nice to say that drills should be done at mid water, but when mid water in a pool means 2 meters depth, for a newbie it's hard to keep buoyancy.
I remember to do a gear change with my buddy at mid water in the pool to get my MSD.
Many skills and the internalization of concepts comes with practice.
We, as professionals of Recreational scuba diving, cannot assume that we will form perfect independent and completely formed recreational scuba divers. This comes with practice and practice comes with dives. A diver should dive. It would be impossible to form a new diver with all the perfect knowledge and practice. What we have to do is to form new divers in the best way possible so they are encouraged to dive as soon as possible after the checkout and as often as possible. With this they will gain practice and experience. If we form them in a way that they are interested in the activity, we will see them often in the dive school for more courses and dive excursions, and they will dive deeper in the knowledge that we gave them in the basic courses.
Looking back, after many years diving and many dives under my belt, I could think that things could have been better or knowledge transfer and drills should have been given in a better way, that's true, but that's just for me. I was only one of many in my basic course. All of the others could think the same with different outputs. What works for me, not necessarily works for the rest. The magic is to choose the better way for the most.
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