Formal education: option or obligation?

[dbulmer]

Devon Diver,

Someone going through the UK club system will often be taught by someone who is qualified to teach but does not receive payment for doing so.

That mentor who is not a friend may be a club member qualified to teach but not the original instructor or someone who has dropped out of formal teaching.

The mentor who is not qualified to teach is a variable and yes some will be good and some will be bad - a bit like professional dive instructors in my opinion.

 

[DevonDiver]

True. I'd class club system training under the banner of "friend" though. Someone qualified to teach and who provides their services without cost. Maybe not a direct friend of the student.. but a 'friend' of the club concerned. I probably could have described it better.

The issue with those 'not qualified to teach' can be about instructional/teaching quality, but it could also include depth of knowledge, diving capability and sense of responsibility. Yes, diving instructors are also variable in those regards. However, you can assume that diving instructors have some foundational knowledge and standards to work at. A non-instructor could just be a blagger, or a hopeless enthusiast - which is why you need to check their experience.

 

[boulderjohn]

A non-instructor could just be a blagger, or a hopeless enthusiast - which is why you need to check their experience.

When I first started skiing, I looked to people with more experience than I for help. By the time I later started taking formal instruction, I had developed so many bad habits I could never fully break them.

When I first started diving, many experienced divers gave me important tips. With current knowledge, I would say that 80% of what they told me in those first years was pure crap.

A good mentor can do wonders for you, but a bad mentor can screw you up badly. Can a new diver tell the difference? There are some very highly experienced potential mentors active on ScubaBoard that I would not want anywhere near any inexperienced diver.

 

[oldogre]

When I Dive with a Professional Instructor as a buddy (i.e. not in a class), and they give me "tips", how does this rate?

 

[boulderjohn]

When I Dive with a Professional Instructor as a buddy (i.e. not in a class), and they give me "tips", how does this rate?

If you are a new diver in this situation, then you have SOME clue as to the quality of the information you are getting. It is by no means perfect, but you at least have that one clue. If the person is not an instructor, you have no clue other than what you see and hear. If you are a new diver, you may not have the experience to judge those clues and may be impressed by things that should instead scare you. For example, your experienced new acquaintance might thrill you with his stories of how he regularly goes beyond 200 feet on a single AL 80 filled with air (etc.). That might seem to be just the ticket for you. Others might disagree. You have to be savvy enough to make an intelligent choice.

 

[DaleC]

I did not vote because the poll is, IMO, overly simplistic and creates a false dichotomy.

Everyone who has read these posts in endless threads over the years knows the argument well. It works like this.

1. Formal scuba instruction is really crappy and turns out divers who don't know what they are doing. These divers are all around us.

2. If you want to learn something, go to one of those divers and ask him or her to mentor you. As soon as you make that request, these crappy divers turn into excellent divers who are much more skilled and knowledgeable than certified instructors. You are thus assured that any of these divers who are not instructors will provide excellent advice.

3. Occasionally these mentors go on to get instructor certification. At that point, they become incompetent morons. So if you want someone to mentor you, be sure to get all that mentoring done before that person makes the mistake of getting professional certification.

Actually, that was not the argument I was referencing at all. The repetitive argument I was referring to goes something like this:

1. While divers may have learned in an unstructured environment in the past,

2. formal education is now widely available,

3. so there is no longer a reasonable rationale for divers to learn in an unstructured environment.

Sound familiar?

Thus, almost every discussion of an advanced/technical concept boils down to:

"You need to take a course for that" (denoting obligation).



I resisted voicing my opinion in the OP but it is quite simple: I believe that divers can advance via both formal and informal education and both are valid pathways (option).
There; a position stated in one sentence that leaves little room for ambiguity and clarifies my approach to discussion in threads within the advanced diving forum.

If someone finds it hard to simply and clearly state their motivation perhaps they need to examine that instead of criticizing the approach of others.

 

[DaleC]

To DaleC

Personally I refuse to accept the options you put foward are mutually exclusive.

I agree with Bob (NWG) - formal education teaches the basic skill and provides a contextual reference. Mentoring provides the opportunity to apply the learning outside a classroom/confined water setting. Both have value and as the capabilities of the diver advance the mixture becomes all the more important to cement the learning.

I don't see them as mutually exclusive. One accepts that formal education, mentoring and/or self study are all valid pathways, the other accepts only formal education as valid. The first is inclusive in nature, the second exclusive.

And I also agree with Bob's assessment. Though, I tend to see formal education as being primarily important when one needs to make major paradigm shifts in thinking ie: OW from non diving, mixed gasses from air, decompression theory from non decompression strategies. Once the paradigm has been incorporated into ones thinking, smaller advances can be achieved via a variety of routes.

 

[Bob DBF]

Formal education is an option and a lot easier to be had than when I started diving. Since the ability to get air and use dive boats is curtailed by lack of formal education a minimum standard OW class is seems to be necessary.

The obligation is to know, understand, and dive to, at the least, the expected standards of the dive community for that dive so that you can be a competent buddy.

When training oneself and working with a mentor one has to be brutally honest in assessing the skills and knowledge you aquire. If one is not up to it, don't bother because you will be putting your butt on the line and you need to know the position of that line.

Personally I believe it is the lowering of formal training standards over the decades that gives the new diver the idea that there is nothing to diving, and then extrapolate that to all diving. It isn't that you don't know what you don't know, It is you don't know what you should have been taught.



Bob
--------------------------------------------
I may be old, but I’m not dead yet.

 

[Rich Keller]

You are obliged to take the OW in order to get your tanks filled, after that the rest is optional. I feel that putting in more hours in the water is far more important then the underwater basket weaving courses that pass for training today.

 

[thirdcoastdiver]

The poll forces you to choose one or the other, instead of using both styles of learning. I would be concerned diving with someone who only had formal training, and I would be concerned diving with someone who had only informal training/mentoring. Good divers want to learn and will use both styles of learning to their advantage. Formal training, when done well, will have an organized progression of knowledge and skills. The informal training expands on that base of knowledge.