Jim, I don't think judging the agency by the actions of one instructor is really the way to go. There are many instructors who *do* answer questions, who *do* use external source of information and who *do* provide their clients with quality training. Some of the things instructors do on their own accord gets attributed to the agency unjustly. In the big picture the agency really doesn't do that much. They provide a framework for a course and some supporting materials. There is a LOT of wiggle room in that to do what needs to be done to provide a quality course and there is a lot of wiggle room in that to provide crap. Some instructors choose the former and some choose for the latter.
If this PE does come in and shake things up, I hope it's in the right direction. I hope they look at some of the incidents that have happened as a result of lower standards and some of the practices by members in certain areas that go on where standards are not only bent, they are ignored. Are they going to crack down on shops and operations cutting corners and instructors certifying people who do not meet the RSTC standards for Basic Open Water certification? Who now is going to sit on the RSTC to represent them? And will this group push for even more lowering of standards in order to maximize profits? Will they start stripping the credentials of resorts who ignore the standards and take divers places they have no business being at their cert level?
The investment company isn't going to look at incidents. They aren't going to look at training at all. In fact, to the investment firm it may come as a complete surprise that PADI even has customers. To make a comparison, if the instructors are like loggers cutting down trees (training students) one tree at a time using a chainsaw (standards), then the investment firm will be looking at the forest from orbit and won't even know what a chainsaw is.
Just a couple other thoughts/questions. What will shops and instructors do if this group does decide to make major changes in the way things are done? If they lower standards will you go along with them if you think they are wrong? If they toughen them will you increase your own? If they change the material significantly and dictate that you must now use those will you if they are not in line with your own methods? And if they make a change that you find morally or ethically wrong in youir mind will you compromise your principles to work with it?
Well... these are loaded questions. Your personal belief is that if a diving course is harder then it must be better.... the "tougher" the better and anything that isn't "tough" is lowering standards. In fact, standards are nothing. A checklist. Nothing more. It's what an instructor *does* with those standards that's important. Quality is, never has been, and never will be delivered by PADI. Quality is delivered by instructors based on some guidelines and materials that the agency makes available. As I said above, there's lots of room in the system to deliver a good course if one aspires to do so. If a given instructor finds it necessary to make learning diving hard so that they feel like they've delivered quality then it shouldn't get in the way of the instructor who feels that making learning easy is better. both can be delivered within standards and both instructors will find students who like their approaches best. It's just not that black and white.
But to address your questions directly and from my own personal point of view:
1) if major changes are made then major changes are made. Not all major changes are for the worse. Perhaps the materials will be modernized (overdue), perhaps the table will be retired (overdue), perhaps the publishing model will be changed so that e-learning/e-books will become the norm so that the materials don't become hopelessly outdated again (overdue), perhaps regional PADI franchises will be given some freedom to enhance standards for specific conditions (overdue). Perhaps quality control will *finally* be made to work as intended. All would be major changes and all would be welcome, if you ask me. One major change that I would like to see is for PADI to make it's materials available electronically for a much lower price and for them to compensate for the inevitable migration of revenue away from book publishing by simply charging a fair price for the actual certification process itself. That would be a major change, a welcome one and a positive one.
2) On cracking down on shops and instructors: That's simply not going to happen. That would be like a PE firm taking over wallmart and then posting guards on the door to harass customers who don't dress well enough. The last thing that PADI is going to do in a period of expansion and transition is to get heavy handed on their existing customer base. Would I like to see QA work? Yes. But it doesn't work and it isn't going to be improved any time soon. PADI (at least to the best of my knowledge) doesn't appear to feel responsible for quality delivery and they are very slow and very reluctant to sanction poor behaviour by instructors.
3) Their materials cannot *not* be in line with my own methods... because they don't *dictate* my methods beyond describing in detail how the CESA needs to be performed, giving me a checklist of things that need to be taught and laying out some basic ground rules such as the requirement that module 1 is completed before module 2 is started, etc. However *IF* I felt that my methods were being constrained to the point that I couldn't deliver quality then I would simply have to throw the towel in the ring. As you know from the back room, something like that is a lot more likely to happen because of "shop rules" than "PADI rules"... shops are quite simply a LOT more likely to pressure instructors to reduce quality than PADI ever has been and ever will be.
4) On principles. Obviously some instructors will compromise principles to stay in the game but that's no different now than it was few days ago. Instructors compromise their principles under pressure from dive shops every day. I have *literally* never seen *anyone* from PADI say that an instructor should "hurry up and get it done on time". Never. This is one of the points where PADI takes a lot of flack for things that they can't even control.
R..
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Richard, I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this point for the moment. A discussion about how social media changes the way businesses do (and must) interact with their customers is beyond the scope of this thread.
Actually, I think comparing PADI's "ostrich" politics to the ostrich politics of Republicans is probably fairly accurate. I don't think that either of those things are done unintentionally (some smart people thought it through and decided that it was too risky to be open about it) but the result on both fronts was to burn bridges to understanding instead of build them. That the Republicans found burning bridges to understanding a "victory" is, of course worthy of its own thread too but it should go in the pub
As for the common perception that PADI training is inadequate, I can only say that PADI doesn't *teach* diving to anyone. PADI made a check list of things that need to be taught and provides students and instructors with some material that facilitates that. Instructors and shops *teach* diving and if customers are dissatisfied with quality (and in many cases they certainly have a right to be) then they should be complaining to the instructors and shops.
The discussion that reaches the forums on this point can be broken into two separate issues:
1) people who don't understand what the agency actually does and therefore end up blaming them for things that are not under their control. On this point there is a LOT of parroting of false information going on an very little thinking about what the agency actually does in this business model.
and
2) people who believe that the agency should control every detail of training such that instructors no longer have any wiggle room to deliver crappy quality. It's still the instructor who delivers crappy quality (just like some teachers at school are better than others), however. Could the agency do something to reduce the amount of crappy training going on? Yes. Should they? That's not an easy question to answer. It could be done but then neither you nor I nor about 30,000 other people on scubaboard would be here to have this discussion. It's a question of "calculated" risk, I guess. Some accidents are inevitable... but how high is too high? People readily accept higher levels of risk from other activities (driving a car, for example) without complaining nearly as much about how people learn to dRive.... That discussion, the discussion about how much risk is too much, is something I don't personally have a good answer for. For me as an instructor losing even 1 student would be too much but statistically, 1 in a million may be an acceptable risk for the industry as a whole.
What's clear is that we, as divers, and as instructors, agencies and other industry stakeholders, don't have a consensus on how much risk is ok, and that's where most of the confusion comes from.
R..
