Ot is incredible how much things changed over years...
My OW course was in 1975. It was 6 months long.
The class was initially of 25 students, but we did lose most of them during the course. At the final exam we were 9. Only 5 were certified. That is 20% of the initial number.
I was told it was a very good result, as in some previous years only 10-15% of the students did pass...
The reason for leaving the course was, for most students, their insufficient free body - free diving fitness, in the first part of the course, and their incapability of getting full control of breathing, body motion and brains state in the second half of the course, when the training switched from free diving to the Oxygen CC rebreather (ARO).
At the exam, instead, most failures were due to the theoretical exam: students did not study properly the physics, physiology and the deco theory and tables, so they had already failed before it was time to go in water.
No one was rejected during the exercises in the pool or at the exam dive in the sea.
Of the people lost during course or at the exam, only 1/3 managed to get certified in the following years.
Among them it was my wife (my girlfriend, at the time), who did get the cert only the second year, but later managed to become a very skilled instructor.
A course with an exam where no one is rejected is not a serious course, in my opinion.
In 1975 getting a CMAS degree was probably too much selective, but giving it easily to everyone makes no good to our sport.
My OW course was in 1975. It was 6 months long.
The class was initially of 25 students, but we did lose most of them during the course. At the final exam we were 9. Only 5 were certified. That is 20% of the initial number.
I was told it was a very good result, as in some previous years only 10-15% of the students did pass...
The reason for leaving the course was, for most students, their insufficient free body - free diving fitness, in the first part of the course, and their incapability of getting full control of breathing, body motion and brains state in the second half of the course, when the training switched from free diving to the Oxygen CC rebreather (ARO).
At the exam, instead, most failures were due to the theoretical exam: students did not study properly the physics, physiology and the deco theory and tables, so they had already failed before it was time to go in water.
No one was rejected during the exercises in the pool or at the exam dive in the sea.
Of the people lost during course or at the exam, only 1/3 managed to get certified in the following years.
Among them it was my wife (my girlfriend, at the time), who did get the cert only the second year, but later managed to become a very skilled instructor.
A course with an exam where no one is rejected is not a serious course, in my opinion.
In 1975 getting a CMAS degree was probably too much selective, but giving it easily to everyone makes no good to our sport.