Did mask removal feel like a punch for anyone else?

[DevonDiver]

Jim, you'd really be interested in drafting the dubious talents of an instructor who cannot follow the standards he signs up for?

I think you must understand many of my feelings about PADI's recreational diving syllabus.. but...but... for as long as I teach within the auspices of that syllabus, I am ethically bound to adhere to it. Anything less is unprofessional. The ethical option remains for me to look for alternative syllabus - and with that option available, ignoring my current operating standards shouldn't be regarded as laudable.

From my own experiences, many of those instructors who illegitimately push 'high-intensity', quasi-military, training drills into their recreational diving classes rarely do so for the student's benefit. In many instances, it is purely to bolster their own egos and/or create an illusion of superiority or 'elitism'.

There is just as many potential failings and dangers in over-demanding a student as there is with under-demanding them.

As others have mentioned, the training programs conducted 30 years ago were taught by a very different breed of instructor under very different circumstances. Most of those men were ex-military divers, who were in the process of actually defining and shaping the recreational diving system through the evolution and adaptation of their military diving training. Likewise, those people who enrolled on their courses were also generally very different to today's dive trainees.

Trying to 'emulate' the teaching of 3 decades ago is not going to work if the instructor and students concerned don't share the experience, mind-set and culture of those times. Few do now.

The defining and shaping of recreational scuba training didn't end 30 years ago... for better and/or worse... the evolution continued until we reached today's standards. Tomorrow's standards will, again, be different to today's. Whilst we can certainly benefit from assessing older methods of training, we should not presume that they are better, or worse, in the modern environment.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

But he is not emulating the training of 30 years ago unless he is ripping masks off. Taking a mask and ripping a mask off are two different things. I'd like some clarification on how it was taken. The doff and don is still taught to SEI and NAUI OW students along with the bailout. But they have been task loaded over time to do these drills, as were PADI divers before they started to chop up the courses in the name of profits and speed. I also believe that there is nothing in the standards prohibiting instructors from adding materials, offering longer classes, and making sure the divers they turn out do indeed meet the RSTC definition of an OW diver. They just can't test on it and require them to be proficient in these things to get their card.

 

[darren_uk]

Then, during my dive, I regularly flood and clear my mask.

Doesn't that wash away any defog you've done (saliva or otherwise) and you're then forced to constantly flood and clear just to keep your mask clear from fogging?