Yeah I think I also share your point of view too Bubbletrouble.
I thought again about this and have another example that I think reflects what you've just said.
When I was a DSD Leader (for those that don't know: this is a PADI Divemaster who has done the bolt-on to allow them to give DSDs, PADI's trial dive) who then went to my local Course Director for the IDC, I explained that the way my previous school was teaching DSDs was Confined Water 1 from the Open Water Diver course. This allowed that school (the owner/instructor) to given financial credit if the trial diver got the bug and signed up for their Open Water Diver course on the back of the DSD.
According to the Standards, there is a difference between a DSD and Confined Water 1, albeit only one difference:
- Alternate Air
Putting it another way (so I can give this story some context/perspective) a DSD (in open water but we did this even though we were in a swimming pool) is:
- BCD operation
- partial mask flood
- regulator purge (blast method + purge button)
- regulator recovery from behind the shoulder (arm sweep)
Confined Water 1 adds:
- Alternate air: have student kneel facing with each other and take it in turns to signal out of air, secure their buddy's alternate air and when they're ready (they're still breathing from their own reg which is remaining in their mouth until they're ready to put the alternate air into their mouth) and so on. I mention this just to put it into context about how safe the skill was.
So that's a bit of back story. I wanted to check this with PADI as my new Course Director had mentioned something similar to what you just said. So I called PADI EMEA up in Bristol (I'm in the UK) and got put through to Training and happened to speak with a lovely guy who happened to be head of quality management of training (who happened to be on my IE too - really lovely chap). He explained the following:
He was confident that I was handling the skill very safely, however should that rare occasion occur and just if the student wants to pop to the surface, and just in case they breath-hold (despite the briefing) and in the unlikely event they suffer from a Lung Over Expansion (despite it being just below the surface in the swimming pool) and should it go to court, I need to be aware that a good lawyer will always try to find ways why it was my fault - and they will immediately pick up on the fact that a DSD doesn't cover alternate air. I'd then be in a world of poo.
Another quick story:
On one of the DVDs that came with my IDC Crew Pak was a re-enactment of a lawsuit where a diver died. The instructor had taken the students to 32m as opposed to the 30m. The lawyers commenting on the legal position of the instructor said that if an incident was to occur, it's better to be inside other standards rather than be marginally outside them. Your opponent's good lawyer would use this against you.
So I'd say you're right. And despite me saying it'd be OK to go above and beyond as long as standards aren't breached, I'd have to add that serious caution and discern needs to be exercised as one will always have to work out in their heads how they'd handle a situation in court should an incident occur. Personally, I want to remain solidly inside standards and curriculum not only to be a good role model, and also to give the student what they've paid for (a PADI Open Water Course or whatever course I'm teaching) but also to keep myself safe in the courtroom in the unlikely event an incident should occur.
An example of where it would be OK to go beyond the curriculum is that example (in this thread? it's been another thread that I've commented on) where the whole "looking up" in mask flooding catches the new student out and often causes some discomfort where water trickles into their nose; in fact I've changed this to "lifting your chin up" rather than "looking up" because I remember when I was a student, I couldn't work out why I'd want to be watching the surface when mask clearing
And then in that particular thread it was explained that divers don't dive on their knees ordinarily and the whole raising the chin would actually be causing the diver to look ahead from a looking down position (because the diver swims horizontally); a contributor to that thread explained that he gets divers to do a mask clear from a fin-pivot and even had an article published in Q2 2011 of the Undersea Journal (PADI's professional membership magazine for those that don't know). These days I explain on the surface that the lifting of the chin is to empty the mask of that little bit of water that's left in the lens and nose pockets, and I demonstrate by holding my mask in my hand and tipping water from it, showing the orientation that the mask needs to be in to get rid of that last cm / half-inch of water.
This is in comparison to teaching additional skills during Open Water which I wouldn't want to do.
And on the subject of PPB, the student's paying for a block of time (instructor time and pool time) during all courses so during Open Water Diver, why give additional free teaching when that doesn't make sense from a business perspective. In a similar way that one wouldn't do the entire Confined Water 1-5 during a DSD "afternoon".
I've waffled on long enough