I cannot speak for all Y Instructors. But for myself the standards are why I became a Y instructor. I am going to affiliate with the new program because those standards are not going to change. We will still teach deco and doff and don. You will still have to be able to swim. If the OW standards were to be lessened I would not be willing to be a part of it.
As to the effect they have on new divers the reason you may not have seen it is because you've not seen any Y students when they come out of OW. Many of them look like the results after AOW with another agency and a few dives under their belt. We will also be fully supportive of independent instructors.
Many YMCA alumni left the organization when YUSA took over management of it. Before then it was active in many areas. When YUSA took over it instituted procedures and requirements to issue certs that were a real pain. The people in charge of it were unfortunately not divers. They essentially killed it. Walter can give a better account than I in that area but what happened was they expected us to be able to apply for permission to teach the course as classes were formed like they do with lifeguards. Now with lifeguards you have a pretty good idea that come spring you are gonna need a few of them, you can form a class over several weeks. No big deal. You get the names, set up the times, and get the sanction to teach, teach the classes over a few weeks and you're done til next year. You cannot do that with scuba since people come in year round. Another thing that helped hasten the demise of the program is the lack of support for it by the national and local Y's in favor of more lucrative aquatic programs like water aerobics and hydro therapy type exercise programs that more people could take advantage of. Many local Y's kept pushing the scuba pool times to smaller and more inconvenient blocks.
Still another factor is equipment. As it became more diverse and expensive the local Y's did not have the funds to keep up with replacing gear. Y's have suffered from the rise of so-called health clubs that offer more elite services and cater to the clientele that traditionally would have the money to invest in scuba training and equipment. Many Y's now serve groups who simply do not have the funds to purchase scuba gear. When you take all of this into consideration and couple it with standards that call for us to recommend gear to students with their best interests before that of a shop it makes it hard to compete with the larger more well known agencies. But in some areas we compete very well. There are those of us who have affiliations with one or more shops that have a steady client base. The one shop I'm affiliated with now has a good relationship with our local Y. Not as much pool time as we'd like but it still works.
The Y program is the oldest national training program in the US. LA County was and is a local program. YScuba was the impetus and model for all the other US agencies that came after. Initially they all followed the Y model. Then things started to change when profits took precendence over everything. When more and more people got an interest in scuba some saw the potential to make lots of money. It then started to become apparent that the more you put through the more money you made. If you started cutting things you could put even more thru faster. So some things started to go by the wayside. Now you have people who can breath under water. But they still need more training. What they initially received in OW they now have to take a class to learn how to jump off a boat. To properly weight themselves and have good trim they need still another class. The YMCA program and the new YDI program believe that there are certain basic skills that should be taught in open water. THere are advanced levels and specialized courses but they are and will be truly specialized, advanced, and worthwhile. My new UW NAv course will have a minimum of 6 dives and 4 hours of classroom. Whether it will be accepted for distribution in it's original form I don't know but I will have the freedom to teach it so that it meets and if necessary far exceeds the standards adopted.
Payment of tuition does not guarantee issuance of a card. It guarantees training. It is up to the student to satisfy the requirements and earn the card.
I am also not interested in producing what I call "underwater tourists". I want to teach those who truly want to dive. I want to know when my student gets his card he/she is prepared to dive in any conditions similiar to which he/she is trained in, with a buddy and not require a DM or guide. I want them to be able to judge when they need to go easy, ask for further training, or just plain be ok with saying no, I'm not doing that dive. I tell my students from the beginning- Scuba is not for everyone. If it is, then just because it is does not mean you can do any dive anywhere. This is an extreme sport. Is it fun, exciting, relaxing, and if you dive within your training and experience safe. Go outside of that and it may very well hurt, cripple, or kill you.
With that in mind I go with NAUI's philosophy that when I train a student I want them trained as if they were a loved one of mine. I would not feel comfortable putting my wife, son ,daughter, parent etc in a course that is done in a week or two. I want them to know how to swim, how to rescue someone from depth, that they will be ok with a situation demanding the ability to cope with a task such as the ditch and don or bailout. The Y program and the standards it follows gives me that peace of mind. If the standards were to be lowered just to make a profit or compete with an organization that I feel does not put the student's best interest at the forefront in every area, be it training, skills, and even their financial resources I would cease to hold membership in it.
YDI Scuba will be a non profit training agency based on solid learning principles and the needs of the student. It will seek to train divers to the highest standards possible. It will ask of it's instructors the same high standards it always has. It will also ask for input from it's instructors and adopt changes and suggestions where it will benefit the students and the agency. I'm new. But they are willing to give me the chance to rewrite what I believe to be a crucial skill for divers. I welcome any input from other Y instructors in this task. Do you think one of the other agencies would allow me to rewrite one of their specialties? Especially if it would mean toughening and lengthening the course. I doubt it. They'd be ok if I could find more shortcuts and get more people thru. It'd mean more money for them. Maybe for me. But not as much satisfaction or peace of mind.
Am I an idealist? Maybe. But maybe I'm just an instructor who is not doing this to turn out large numbers of divers. But one who is interested in turning out divers that I or anyone else would have no problem getting in the water with even if we were not getting paid to do it.
