DougK:
Are you down on PADI becuse they are the "fast food" of diving or what?
OK, so you've heard the "It's the instructor, not the agency" cant - that's partially true. All major agencies have their good and bad instructors.
You've seen the RSTC party line that all agencies are the same - that's patently false. At a given price point, you can find courses from any agency, so clearly, competition is based on other differences.
PADI started out as a non-profit organization, like all the other agencies. About 20 years ago, the board formed a corporation and bought the agency, and now, PADI is a for profit corporation like GM or Microsoft. All the other agencies are non-profits like the Red Cross, which offers CPR and aquatics training for a fee.
When PADI became for profit, they applied all the market research tools other companies use, and they found that the only way for the percentage of the population that dives to increase significantly is to make it quicker and easier to get into diving. They found that consumers want immediate gratification with little or no effort.
In other words, if you could get a certification card from a vending machine, almost everyone would dive, and if you had to go through Navy SEAL training to dive, very few people would do so.
In response to this information, they shortened the course, removed content, and also removed information that might intimidate potential divers. People will rant and argue about this, but it is objective fact that you can now get OW certified in one weekend, when it once took months, that clearly identifiable skills like buddy breathing were once required and now are not, and that several dangerous types of barotrauma are euphemistically lumped into the less threatening sounding phrase "lung overexpansion injury." As a result of these changes, the number of divers grew dramatically. Dive related businesses flourished, and, of course, PADI raked in a whole lotta dough. All good, right?
Well, a lot of divers don't think so. Many people feel that traiing should continue to be as rigorous and thorough as it once was. They feel that the role of training and certification is as a barrier to entry, assuring competent, capable divers. This is similar to the thinking behind making med school so tough - it makes better doctors. They realize that it might mean fewer divers, but they are OK with that. Obviously, this group does not include many people whose livelihood is tied to growth of the diving industry.
People argue about whether the changes have caused more accidents, and there is evidence for both sides of that argument. One thing that has changed is that most recreational diving is now done under professional supervision. 20 years ago, all diving operations did was give you a boat ride to the dive site. Now, DM's guide and watch over divers the entire time. Some people resent this. There are large dive operations today that do not let customers assemble their own gear. A lot of operations also require divers to demonstrate some skills before they dive. All these measures, in effect, say that the operators don't place much trust in certifications as evidence that divers know what they're doing.
In fairness to PADI, it must be noted that the other agencies, in order to compete, have floowed PADI down this road to varying degrees. However, there is one glaring difference. PADI does not allow an instructor to REQUIRE more of a student than the PADI standards dictate. There is some wiggle room in this in that the standards require "mastery" of certain skills without defining mastery very well, but, PADI specifically prohibits the requirement of "stressing" drills, which are exercises designed to task load the student or place them under stress while performing skills. Other agencies do allow this - for insatnce, NAUI has the "loved one" test - the instructor is not required to certify anyone he/she wouldn't want a loved one to buddy with. Now, obviously, this could be abused, but I've never heard of it happening.
A good comparison is the way driver's licenses are issued in the USA and Germany. In the USA, drivers licenses are almost as easy to obtain as the prize in a Cracker Jack box, and we have oppressive speed limits. In Germany, they have a test that many American police officers couldn't pass, but then trust people who hold licenses to determine a safe speed on their own. Diving once was like the German system, but is now more like the American system, and PADI is largely responsible for that change. Some people think it's for the better, some don't. You've probably surmised by now that I fall into the latter group, even though I'm a PADI member. You'd be surprised how many people who are PADI professionals resent the way PADI has gone. Jokes that PADI stands for "Put Another Dollar In" or "Pay Alot, Dive Immediately" originated with PADI instructors.
At a PADI member Update presentation a few years ago, we were told "We're not selling education; we're selling entertainment!" Decide for yourself if that's a good thing.
DougK:
DIR (Doing It Right) is the strongest segment of the backlash against the trend outlined above. It is a movement that says divers should be thoroughly trained, should select equipment based purely on objective considerations, rather than personal preference or fashion, and that diving is a potentially dangerous activity to be taken seriously, not to be compared with, say, golf. The principles of DIR were worked out primarily by a group of cave divers in Florida called the WKPP, who are doing very extreme diving, based on analysis of past accidents and practices. It is an evolving system, but the central idea is that all practices must be based on objective principles, not emotional whim or aesthetics. The most well known aspect of DIR is the equipment configuration, and many people will say they are DIR simply because they have that configuration, but they are not. Among other things, DIR says that divers should be VERY physically fit, so some obese slob can't become DIR simply by strapping on the rig, as is an all too common practice and claim. Proponents of DIR tend to be VERY dogmatic, and this puts off a lot of people. There is an agency, GUE, that is rather small, that teaches strictly by DIR principles.
People here and elsewhere have very strong opinions on both these issues. Keep in mind, that most people enter diving through a single weekend PADI course, and thus start out thinking that's the cat's meow. As people advance in diving, they learn more, and those who adopt the DIR point of view do so gradually. As Frank Herbert said, there is no one as zealous as a convert, and this accounts for a lot of the strong rhetoric from the DIR people. Asking someone who recently adopted DIR principles about PADI is like asking an ex-smoker about smoking - you won't get a timid answer.
Do some more investigation. GUE puts on DIR demos at dive sites around the country. Look, listen, learn, investigate, and dive, and evaluate the issues yourself.
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