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A scuba agency with higher standards will always turn out better divers?
Julie
Julie
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MikeFerrara:The agencies need to go out in the field once in a while and see what's going on and forget those stupid questionairs.
MikeFerra:The standards need to be written in terms of measurable requirements that mean something. It is requires that buoyancy control be taught in an entry level class but we mostly see these students on their knees and or leaving a trail of silt with poor trim and finning technique. The standards require a kick to be taught but it doesn't exclude doing it with fins in the bottom. The standards may require a student to hover for a certain period of time once or twice. It should require them to hover whenever they're not going anyplace.
The standards are an absolute joke. The proof is that you can teach a really lousy class without violating them. You can argue that the intent of the standards is being violated but why don't they just state the intent? I say it's because then some one would expect them to enforce them. I know how some agencies respond to complaints of sloppy teaching. The standards are written to allow that and the releases are written such that avoiding injury is the responsibility of the student.
The RSTC is nothing but a bunch of agencies writting what they are doing into a standards (ANSII) It's the fox watching the hen house.
Scott M:Genesis, I think you know by a lot of my reply's that we have been on the same side of the fence on most issues. I am no stranger to business. I very much dislike government intervention but.........as a whole the raising of standards and the accountability of those standards has raised the bar and benefited our company by putting the small fly-by-night operator out because they could not perform to the same level we could, in the end the consumer benefits.
You and I both know that the existence of one agency will never happen in the real world. As long as the market is there, there is going to be multiple agencies, with out some form of regulation it is a free for all.
I am not so sure having one agency would even be the answer as the old saying goes "absolute power corrupts absolutely". What would stop a single agency from abusing the power with no intervention. The market? possibly but by the time that happens many will be injured or dead.
Scott
Walter:Scott,
"How would it be possible to have accountability with out a standard by which to judge it?"
Results. Most of the divers I see on the reef are clearly not ready to be there. They have not learned basics I teach before I even introduce SCUBA.
Scott M:That would help but with out a centralized complaint center weeding out the slackers would be time consuming.
"Measurable requirements" Well said.
Scott
Genesis:I'm not talking about there being only one agency - I'm talking about one with a bar MUCH higher than the "common denominator" we have now!
Right now, NONE of the recreational agencies have high enough bars. NONE.
Genesis:Let me give you an example.
All agencies say that students must "master" buoyancy control to get an OW card. But what does "master" mean?
These very same agencies have their students kneel down in the sand to do mask removal/replacement, and to recover a regulator. Now, if the students must demonstrate mastery of neutral buoyancy, is not by definition the performance of those other skills while kneeling proof positive that they are not meeting that definition?
Second example: On a not-so-long-ago class day, I was on a cattle boat and witnessed an instructor, on the last OW cert dive, "park" his students on an anchor line while he unstuck the anchor.
If those students had mastered buoyancy, would you not just have them hang motionless near but not touching the line? Of course you would. The conclusion is that they had not mastered anything - a conclusion born out when the line began to move, and the students were stripped off one at a time, headed for the surface..... because they had no clue what neutral buoyancy was.
After all, mastery is not "doing it once in a while". Its doing it all the time!