Why waste money on training!?

[edwardjohnson]

I'm not buying that one. Keep levels low so you can keep people safe? The uneducated are actually better off than the educated? Stuff the Cultural Revolution was built on. And you actually included the part where those who reject lowering their knowledge are enemies of the greater good. If you take two groups, those who are educated in skills, and those who are not - I suspect the first group would be less likely to get injured. Show me one activity where this is otherwise.

No I am not saying that the uneducated are better off nor to keep the level low...You can raise the requirements all you want there will still be people doing things they aren´t meant to do (Example of guns in the US). Im viewing things in a different perspective since you all seem to agree that c-cards and agencies are not enough to let a diver jump in alone nowaday.

Why all the hate. Did someone actually endanger your life by taking on a personal diving challenge or are you just opposed to such people on principle. Do you also lump in all those naive divers who die in benign conditions while under the attendance of dive professionals dong something they were told was safe.

There is no hate from me, this was an answer to a post from DCBC previously. As he also mentionned before there are always investigations to figure out what went wrong with the "naive" divers because so many of the died with professionals around obviously.

This brings up the question about instructor/operator responsibility. In the case of diver injury or death, quite often a civil case will determine negligence. This is based on what was done and what the instructor/operator failed to do, which was reasonable under the circumstances.

Simply following any Agency's 'training standards' is insufficient to negate liability. The instructor/operator has to show that they acted in a reasonable manner. As soon as you take someone's money to teach them how to dive, you accept the responsibility to ensure that the student possesses a reasonable level of knowledge and skill before you certify them to dive.

Some other questions that come to mind:
Are the Agency Standards sufficient under the circumstances?
Did the instructor ensure that the Standards were met?
If anything was added, were these reasonable under the circumstances?
If anything wasn't added, was it reasonable to do so under the circumstances?

There are many different interpretation of the word "reasonable" and I think that everyone´s entitled to his own, you look at the instructors and the agencies but I look at the divers themselves. If we follow the rule of sticking to the worst, there wouldn´t be diving at all. It´s a sport, we all take risks doing it.

The thinking then was that the more you knew about diving and your own limitations, the the safer you could plan and execute your dives, and should there be an issue, the more likely that you could respond properly and survive an incident. Although my personal experience is not data, that mindset has kept me reasonably safe for over 50 years of diving.

Yes, and more people should think like that, it´s pretty much common sense if you think that you´ll be jumping in unknown water with not much to keep you alive other than yourself.

 

[Redshift]

No I am not saying that the uneducated are better off nor to keep the level low...You can raise the requirements all you want there will still be people doing things they aren´t meant to do (Example of guns in the US). Im viewing things in a different perspective since you all seem to agree that c-cards and agencies are not enough to let a diver jump in alone nowaday.

Of course, but those will do the same no matter what. They don't matter for this discussion.
The problem are all those who actually follow the rules, but are not being trained to desirable standards and possibly don't even realize it.

 

[Bob DBF]

No I am not saying that the uneducated are better off nor to keep the level low...You can raise the requirements all you want there will still be people doing things they aren´t meant to do (Example of guns in the US). Im viewing things in a different perspective since you all seem to agree that c-cards and agencies are not enough to let a diver jump in alone nowaday.

I did not say or imply "that c-cards and agencies are not enough to let a diver jump in alone nowaday", I just believe that if one does hand out an OW card the person receiving it should be able to handle open water and have good judgement when diving. Some of what I have seen makes we wonder about their training. I believe that if the training is comprehensive, both in and out of the water, the student should have the tools to make good decisions. However, 4 days is not going to do that, and ease of the class will make some believe that all dive training is a joke and not necessary to heed or continue.

If the problem is "there will still be people doing things they aren´t meant to do", I don't know what to say. Living in a reasonably free country, you are allowed to be stupid, and some people take more advantage of that than I care for, but it is their choice.

There is no law in the US that requires anyone to have a c-card to dive, with or without training. I dove for 17 years without a card, including deco and overheads, and was surprised and annoyed when I needed a card to get air outside of my LDS. Today there is much better gear and since that alone can get you into more trouble faster than the old days, I think that training should be even more comprehensive than it was.



Bob
------------------------------------------------

That's my point, people, by and large, are not taught that diving can be deadly, they are taught how safe it is, and they are not equipped with the skills, taught and trained to the level required to be useful in an emergency.

 

[DCBC]

Originally Posted by Thalassamania
That's my point, people, by and large, are not taught that diving can be deadly, they are taught how safe it is, and they are not equipped with the skills, taught and trained to the level required to be useful in an emergency.


I can understand that the focus on profit has driven the training standards to be lower, but what I don't understand is why more comprehensive training was not insisted on by SCUBA students? I suppose those who were new to diving couldn't be expected to understand what was done in the past, or for that matter what training standards should be as reasonable (you don't know what you don't know).

The instructors (and agencies) that taught (and lowered training standards) were fully aware of what they were doing. So were all the active divers at that time. When PADI made many of their changes in the mid 80's (prohibiting an instructor from adding more to the OW program course content), I left the organization. NAUI dropped their standards last year (once again), but as they still encourage instructors to teach beyond the minimum standards, I've heard instructors comment that NAUI can do what they like because their training standards will remain unchanged (my course requirements have largely remained the same since 1971). In either case, a lower standard allows an instructor to certify a less competent diver. I can't see how this benefits diving in general.

I think the outlook of people must have changed greatly over the years. Before, students compared diving programs to see how much training they could get and the value of that training. Today it seems that the majority are only concerned with how little training they can get by with and how inexpensive they can get it. It makes me wonder where everything is going.

What do you think will be required for to become a certified diver in 2025? Instructor standards have also been on a continual decline as well. I wonder what the instructor certification standards will be like in the future?

 

[rhwestfall]

What do you think will be required for to become a certified diver in 2025? Instructor standards have also been on a continual decline as well. I wonder what the instructor certification standards will be like in the future?

OW will be on line (or some "virtual experience".....)

DCBC - look at just about everything in society these days... Its all about shortcuts and the minimums to just get by.... instant gratification in the shortest possible time, and move on...

 

[Redshift]

I think the outlook of people must have changed greatly over the years. Before, students compared diving programs to see how much training they could get and the value of that training. Today it seems that the majority are only concerned with how little training they can get by with and how inexpensive they can get it. It makes me wonder where everything is going.

It's not very easy to compare courses. The information is often vague. And the message being passed on is "come have fun", "this is easy"...
Maybe people haven't changed, but with diving becoming more accessible and advertized, it was opened to those who in the past wouldn't bother even trying and now they know they can do it without much effort and in the end have the same card to show to their friends.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Originally Posted by Thalassamania
That's my point, people, by and large, are not taught that diving can be deadly, they are taught how safe it is, and they are not equipped with the skills, taught and trained to the level required to be useful in an emergency.


I can understand that the focus on profit has driven the training standards to be lower, but what I don't understand is why more comprehensive training was not insisted on by SCUBA students? I suppose those who were new to diving couldn't be expected to understand what was done in the past, or for that matter what training standards should be as reasonable (you don't know what you don't know).

The instructors (and agencies) that taught (and lowered training standards) were fully aware of what they were doing. So were all the active divers at that time. When PADI made many of their changes in the mid 80's (prohibiting an instructor from adding more to the OW program course content), I left the organization. NAUI dropped their standards last year (once again), but as they still encourage instructors to teach beyond the minimum standards, I've heard instructors comment that NAUI can do what they like because their training standards will remain unchanged (my course requirements have largely remained the same since 1971). In either case, a lower standard allows an instructor to certify a less competent diver. I can't see how this benefits diving in general.

I think the outlook of people must have changed greatly over the years. Before, students compared diving programs to see how much training they could get and the value of that training. Today it seems that the majority are only concerned with how little training they can get by with and how inexpensive they can get it. It makes me wonder where everything is going.

What do you think will be required for to become a certified diver in 2025? Instructor standards have also been on a continual decline as well. I wonder what the instructor certification standards will be like in the future?

Part of the problem I see with todays training and entire structure of the dive industry is profit oriented. They have created such a huge money hungry machine and it needs to be fed every day to stay alive.
Just by this scenario there is no way they could ever go back to harder more thorough training. They can barely stay alive now!
They will continually find more ways to get more new people in regardless if they remain active or not. Established divers don't make agencies money, new divers do.
They also don't care how low standards drop because if they don't get new people in at any cost they will be out of a job.

As simple as that.

It's kind of late to try and go back now. There are a lot of dive operators, manufacturers, resorts, and cert agencies dependent on that money continuously flowing in.
Slow steady growth with uncompromised standards would have been better than what we have now, but money has a way of doing that.

 

[flots am]

It's kind of late to try and go back now. There are a lot of dive operators, manufacturers, resorts, and cert agencies dependent on that money continuously flowing in.
Slow steady growth with uncompromised standards would have been better than what we have now, but money has a way of doing that.

Maybe they'll all collapse and we can go back to dive clubs and individuals teaching SCUBA just because they like it.

 

[DaleC]

That's an interesting point. Should scuba instruction be thought of as an occupation or vocation. Conventional thinking says of course it's an occupation but if one could roll back the clock and someone said "I think I am going to try and make a living teaching people to scuba dive" in say.. Arizona, would they be encouraged or discouraged. Would people assume there would be enough interest or would there be some concern regarding the revenue streams. Now, almost all students are encouraged to "turn pro" right after as little as 25 dives.

I am thinking of the time I began rock climbing. This was just on the cusp of the sport climbing/hang dogging/artificial wall craze that made climbing mainstream. Climbing was somewhat self selecting because it was problematic to top rope, so there was a real risk of falling. Sport climbing changed that and now 8 year old's and grandmothers do it. Back then no one I knew thought of teaching rock climbing as a profession, though there were guides that acted as pseudo instructors. There were mentors and most people taught what they knew because they wanted to, not to make money.

 

[SanDiegoSidemount]

I don't know any scuba instructors doing too much better than break-even from their teaching alone. If someone's making money from all the damn classes and certifications, well it sure ain't the instructors themselves.