The Philosophy of Diver Training

[DCBC]

DCBC, one other thing it's about, and the one thing that may be most important for many is availability of options. In my area, for example, there are 4 shops in reasonable driving range. All of them are PADI stores.

This is a valid point.

One of the real problems I have with all of the complaints from the instructors of other agencies on this board about how much PADI sucks is precisely that their business model either doesn't allow them to compete in terms of market penetration or they are too lazy and broke to do so. These agencies are verging non-factors in the diving community as a whole, and are simply non-existent not just in my locale but in many areas around the USA. How many divers did SEI certify last year? A few thousand at most? Was that even 1% of what PADI certified?

Steak houses don't really try to compete with McDonald"s. Just because there is a McDonald's in the area doesn't mean that there isn't a market for a Steak House.

If the only thing that counts is numbers, PADI wins. If however quality means more to you than quantity, you go elsewhere.

For me, how the diver is trained means more to me than I much I've made in training them. If other instructors didn't feel this way, PADI would be the only certification agency.

It is ludicrous to complain about how much PADI sucks when these agencies are not giving the millions of potential dive customers a meaningful option to choose an agency other than PADI.

Perhaps, but imagine a certification agency that starts selling diving certifications on the Internet and the 90% of the public go that way. PADI would no longer be the powerhouse it once was. They would complain that what this other certification agency was doing was wrong and unethical. The other agency would tout its numbers and success. PADI would complain about the lack of quality in diver education.

This is how many of the other certification agencies and their instructors look at PADI today. PADI can try to argue numbers, but the quality isn't there when compared to the training philosophy of the other organizations.

 

[Kingpatzer]

Kingpatzer, you really need to start your own thread. The OP was:



It seems that, in offering opinions, the posts are on-topic. By telling people to put-up or shut-up, you may not be...

Discussions morph. While it is clearly the option of the mods to split threads, since my response was in direct response to DCBC's excellent explication of factors involved it is an organic outgrowth of the conversation.

Where I going off on the use of bp/w's in training, I'd be more inclined to agree.

 

[Kingpatzer]

Steak houses don't really try to compete with McDonald"s. Just because there is a McDonald's in the area doesn't mean that there isn't a market for a Steak House.

That is true in many smaller markets. But we're talking major metropolitan areas here not podunk towns. When there is a steakhouse, the population is at least cognizant of options. But when there isn't one, they are not.

If the only thing that counts is numbers, PADI wins. If however quality means more to you than quantity, you go elsewhere.

When those touting the importance of quality don't give you the option to go elsewhere, it doesn't matter what means more.

And, where there are choices, I am not trying to say that numbers are more important. I am saying that without at least significant effort at education and market penetration efforts in major metropolitan areas, it is hard for me to believe that those complaining care enough about the quality issue to actually try to do something about it.

For me, how the diver is trained means more to me than I much I've made in training them. If other instructors didn't feel this way, PADI would be the only certification agency.

That's probably true of most PADI instructors as well. I could make more working at McDonalds (speaking of which) than I can working as an AI. I suspect it would be about break-even where I instructing.

I'm not going through the trouble of getting my instructor's cert because I want to make money. I'm doing it because I want to share my passion with others. I'm going PADI because even though I live in a top-20 metro area, it's the only choice I have.

PADI would complain about the lack of quality in diver education.

And what they would do about it would indicate how much they actually cared. (As an aside, given my personal opinion of the value of on-line "classroom" versus real interaction, I'm wondering what happens when the agency doing the on-line selling is PADI )

This is how many of the other certification agencies and their instructors look at PADI today. PADI can try to argue numbers, but the quality isn't there when compared to the training philosophy of the other organizations.

Philosophy without accompanying action is known as hypocrisy.

And to be fair, I do recognize that individuals are often in the same boat as myself when it comes to being able to act on a large scale - financial realities can suck. But the governing organizations are another story, raise the dues to cover training efforts. When there are top-10 metro areas without a single instructor for an agency, the agency is failing to live up to their apparent beliefs in tne insufficiency of PADI training. After all, their refusal to act in those markets means they accept that PADI training for those markets isn't so bad.

 

[Kingpatzer]

Not a big fan of diplomacy?

Terry

I looked up the definition of "tact" once, I really didn't understand it

 

[TSandM]

The biggest problem with opening a steakhouse is that your potential customer base knows nothing more than that it's hungry

I would be willing to bet that the VAST majority of people who get certified to dive where they live go to a dive shop they've driven past, or that they find in the Yellow Pages or by Googling. And that shop will be the one that's convenient for them to get to. They probably have no idea at all that there are different certifying agencies, or that there are any meaningful differences between them. Most of them know nothing whatsoever about diving, aside from the fact that it involves going underwater with a tank. In my very brief experience with students, some are alert, curious people who want to know more, and many more are folks who aren't really very interested in putting in an enormous amount of effort to become divers.

Agencies, and agency policies, are not entirely to blame for the state of things.

The dive industry is made up of a lot of components -- dive shops, resorts and liveaboards, instructors, agencies . . . I think they'd probably all agree that there is a problem with diving as it is today, but they'd entirely disagree on what the problem IS and how to solve it. It's like health care -- until you can agree on a vision of what you want to create, it's difficult to come up with a strategy for creating it.

 

[DCBC]

DCBC's been around forever according to him, but he only has one shop if I'm not mistaken. So either his business model can't open another in an area that is under-served by his agency/training method, or he'd rather spend his time doing other things that are more important to him than addressing the state of diver training.

I've been teaching since 1972. This is not a claim, it's been verified by SB. Certainly 38 years instructing seems long, but I'm sure SB has other instructors that have more experience.

As a matter of clarification, I no longer own a dive shop. I use to own one in Abbotsford (Vancouver area) along with a dive charter business in Vancouver. The primary purpose of these were to service a licensed provincial trade school for commercial diving & the certification of recreational instructors, along with running a commercial diving business. These were sold when I moved to the east coast to supervise the underwater escape training for the Canadian military and develop the Coast Guard rescue swimmer program before going into the offshore diving scene in 1984.

Nothing is stopping such people from quiting their jobs and trying to make a dive shop work other than a lack of conviction that the problem is actually important enough to address combined with a fear of failure.

This is being done daily. Not all shops are PADI shops. Some PADI shops are not only PADI shops.

Oberve away. Until you try to do something about it, you're just whining. Actions matter far more than words. Anyone can whine.

I don't see this as whining. The recreational diving industry is made-up of more than just shops. Individual instructors also are a major part and each chooses how s/he wishes to teach. Some choose PADI, while others choose a different organization. Being an instructor with another organization is not a passive action. We know who the big boy is on the block. even so, we choose not to run with him.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

But how do you know there are not instructors for other agencies? Have you checked? Did you contact NAUI, SEI, BSAC, CMAS Americas, SSI, SDI, etc to see if there are any independent instructors available? Just because they may not be listed in the phone book which by the way os one of the MOST expensive ways to advertise does not mean they are not around. Unfortunately that cost is what forces many to use word of mouth, message boards, and our own websites.

 

[Scott L]

An interesting question would be - how many life-long scuba participants are snuffed out by poor training or do these types persevere long enough to find proper guidance?

 

[Kingpatzer]

But how do you know there are not instructors for other agencies? Have you checked? Did you contact NAUI, SEI, BSAC, CMAS Americas, SSI, SDI, etc to see if there are any independent instructors available?

I've looked at the "find an instructor" sections of most of those web sites and have come up blank for many areas. SEI doesn't allow that on-line so my example of Tx may be off. Do you know of SEI instructors in Tx not associated with the lone Dallas store? Not allowing for on-line discovery of SEI instructors, btw, is a serious short coming if you ask me!

Google searches are not limited to the phone book. If these people don't even have a web site, which costs only a few dollars a month, then they aren't that serious about things, are they? In this day and age that is a primary form of discovery for the major scuba demographic!

 

[DCBC]

The biggest problem with opening a steakhouse is that your potential customer base knows nothing more than that it's hungry

Yes I think I made this point in a previous post regarding students. Unfortunately, a prospective client can go into a LDS to learn about diver training and walkout of the building not really knowing what they purchased. They put their trust in someone, but the client doesn't receive full disclosure.

I fear that people are largely uninformed as to the level of training that they have just purchased and what is really required to dive safely. When a training program is designed to lower the training requirements to sell diving equipment, it's reasonable that the salesperson selling said training doesn't inform the prospective student of this.