Serious question about PADI

[DougK]

After reading about a page and 1/2 of the previous PADI AND THE FUTURE thread, I did have a very serious question:

I am new to diving and this board: I detect a dislike of PADI among the posters? Why is that?

When I was looking into diving I was only familiar with PADI. However the time I needed to get certified within before a trip forced me to use a SSI shop about an hour away in another town. (The local PADI shop's course ran through the departure date of my trip.) At the time, I was uncertian about using SSI which I had never heard of.

I seem to get a feel from this board that this may have been a good thing?????? Do you folks think SSI is better than PADI?

I however felt my SSI class was a bit rushed, and my instructor left us with the instructions to treat our certification like a "learners permit."

Are you down on PADI becuse they are the "fast food" of diving or what?

What is DIR?

Again this is a serious post from a new diver.

 

[jbd]

DougK,
There is much agency bashing within the diving community. Don't worry about it too much. The most common advice is to pick an instructor that you are comfortable with and who has been recommended to you. Interview them if you can. All the agencies teach basically the same thing at the entry level. There are some differences but they are not show stoppers.

Indeed when you are first certified to dive you need to consider it as a learners permit. There just is not enough time to teach and train a person to be a highly skilled highly experienced diver in a few short weeks. Take your time and develope your skills, abilities and experiences over time.

All agencies have good instructors and not so good instructors. They also have the occasional down right bad instructor and each agency has its methods of getting rid of these kinds of instructors.

One other thing to keep in mind. Whatever we do in life, we get back what we put into it. Be the very best proactive student that you can be.

Best regards,

jbd

PS. DIR stands for Doing It Right. There is a tremendous amount of material on scubaboard about DIR. Use the search feature and read with an open mind. There is a lot emotion in this area and it comes through in a lot of the posts.

 

[Otter]

After reading about a page and 1/2 of the previous PADI AND THE FUTURE thread, I did have a very serious question:

I am new to diving and this board: I detect a dislike of PADI among the posters? Why is that?

When I was looking into diving I was only familiar with PADI. However the time I needed to get certified within before a trip forced me to use a SSI shop about an hour away in another town. (The local PADI shop's course ran through the departure date of my trip.) At the time, I was uncertian about using SSI which I had never heard of.

I seem to get a feel from this board that this may have been a good thing?????? Do you folks think SSI is better than PADI?

I however felt my SSI class was a bit rushed, and my instructor left us with the instructions to treat our certification like a "learners permit."

Are you down on PADI becuse they are the "fast food" of diving or what?

What is DIR?

Again this is a serious post from a new diver.

As you read the various threads, you find that most experienced divers will tell you its not the agency but the Instructor that will determine the quality of your training. There are good PADI/NAUI/SSI (etc..) Instructors. There are also bad PADI/NAUI/SSI instructors.

While there are some differences between the agencies, their standards flow from the a single industry group (RSTC) which attempt to create a consistent set of minimum standards that all entry level student divers must achieve. After entry-level instruction, the agencies diverge. PADI is a for-profit, NAUI is a non-profit and I believe SSI is a for-profit.

With 70-80% share of the certified divers world-wide, PADI is the largest for-profit agency and therefore tends to garner the lionshare of bashing. Some of it is your typical 'my agency is better than yours' stuff, other is a by-product of PADI's marketing activity, and some are legitimate issues -- mostly these are from Instructors who view PADI's structured teaching approach either wrong or too restrictive.

Bottomline is that PADI wants more certified divers. They market aggressively (Industry relative), depending on the topic they are more/less conservative, and they are big. People will always be able to find fault with companies like that.

DIR or Doing It Right is a holistic approach to diving taught by GUE and is best explained in this thread.

This is a somewhat simplified/condensed response to your question. Look around and/or use the search function and you will get a more comprehensive answer.

Welcome to ScubaBoard.

P.S. I see JBD posted while I was typing and it looks like we are saying basically the same thing.

 

[Mako Mark]

Hi Doug, welcome to the board,

I think that the thread you saw was mostly good natured banter. Obviously there is inter agency competitiveness, but as Otter said, we all pretty much follow the RSTC standards, and diving is diving, we all pretty much teach the same thing, just in different ways. The most important thing is the instructor, not the agency.

I think PADI gets picked on a lot because it is the largest and most visible of the agencies.

 

[Gary D.]

After reading about a page and 1/2 of the previous PADI AND THE FUTURE thread, I did have a very serious question:

I am new to diving and this board: I detect a dislike of PADI among the posters? Why is that?

When I was looking into diving I was only familiar with PADI. However the time I needed to get certified within before a trip forced me to use a SSI shop about an hour away in another town. (The local PADI shop's course ran through the departure date of my trip.) At the time, I was uncertian about using SSI which I had never heard of.

I seem to get a feel from this board that this may have been a good thing?????? Do you folks think SSI is better than PADI?

I however felt my SSI class was a bit rushed, and my instructor left us with the instructions to treat our certification like a "learners permit."

Are you down on PADI becuse they are the "fast food" of diving or what?

What is DIR?

Again this is a serious post from a new diver.

If you felt rushed it was most likely your instructor and not the agency. Sounds like you waited until the last minute to get certified which doesn’t help either.

All of the agency’s have their good and bad points so that doesn’t matter. Just use a good one and not “Billy Bob’s Bubble Blowing Divin Skul”.

Basically you do have a learners permit. Do you feel that you know enough to handle most any situation that might arise with your level of training? If you do find another sport before proceeding any further with this one. Over the years the requirements for OW and AOW have been reduced to a point where nearly everyone will pass the course. This can get scary.

There are a lot of classes that you can take to advance your knowledge of diving. Choose them carefully not by agency but by instructor. You can mix and match agencies. For example I have NAUI, Navy, PADI and SSI classes.

You see posts here and on other boards that say: My instructor was wonderful, or great or fantastic. But he/she didn’t cover this or that and I didn’t feel like he/she covered this or that as well as he/she could but he/she was the best. Dive instructing should not be based on a popularity contest but on the content of information delivered to the students in a way they will all understand. There are good instructors and not so good instructors with all the agencies so pick and choose carefully.

As far as DIR (Do it right), stay away from all that info at this point. Get some time under your belt before looking into it. It can go way overboard if you allow it to.

Welcome to the diving world. Enjoy it and continue your education. And you do have a “Learners Permit”.

Gary D.

 

[zboss]

It's real easy for those agencies and psuedo-clubs to bash the leader since they don't have to accomodate the training of those individuals that are not just interested in technical diving or are marginally interested in diving in general. Indeed - I would suggest that for the vast majority of divers out there GUI-like training would fail miserably as a educational and experience avenue.

Believe it or not, PADI's greatest weakness is also it's strengh. Yes - there are fish identification classes and boat diving classes. But - maybe I'm I'm not entirely comfortable with those topics and want to spend some time talking about them in particular? This method of training is like college, it allows divers to participate in a broader range of training options. Does PADI offer the best classes? Not all the time.

 

[aquaoren]

I will second the first two answers to your question.
The instructor is the most important thing and not the agency. Your instructor appears to be a reasonable one because he told you the right thing: none of us were "good" diver when passed the OW course. This is a beginning of a road, where you'll have to improve skills, gather knowledge.
Welcome to the Scuba Board, enjoy our beautiful sport and safe diving

 

[edwinh]

For every agency basher's claim of its supported agency, I can recall experiences where it is has been violated.

To me, agency does not matter. Quality of instruction does. I'm PADI trained and I'm confident to say that I am well trained. My instructors were detailed, strict and comprehensive.

Cheers!

 

[lamont]

As far as DIR (Do it right), stay away from all that info at this point. Get some time under your belt before looking into it. It can go way overboard if you allow it to.

Gotta disagree. So far, going the DIR direction has been working out fine for me as a newbie diver. And I highly recommend looking into it and making a decision before you start buying a bunch of gear.

 

[paolov]

I gave it some thought as well before becoming a PADI instructor. i have my pros and cons. ultimately from where i am scuba diving PADI came out to be the most advantageous for me.

I guess you should make that your key deciding factor. what works for you.