Diving Classes Then and Now

[Hawkwood]

PADI AOW requires Deep and Nav. The other three Adventure Dives are up for grabs.

Night was required a long time ago, but no longer...it's been quite a while.

 

[NAM001]

Sorry about that i forgot how it went.

PADI AOW requires Deep and Nav. The other three Adventure Dives are up for grabs.

Night was required a long time ago, but no longer...it's been quite a while.

---------- Post added March 14th, 2015 at 02:23 PM ----------

I just read a post by drich2 and something he said brought some little known facts to mind. I say little known because there are so few that dove "IN THE DAYS" After thinking about it I have to say that much of the watering down was needed. The basis of the training is no longer there. Imagine your self in the 60's when all you had was a backblard or car seat with a tank metel strapped to it. Those tanks had logo's on them that either read Us divers, voit, or the new guy DACOR on it. There were no such things like BCD's, or SPG's. Imagine how todays training classes would go if you had no BCD's . I was 140# with a healthways 72 cuft tank with j valve. full bevertail 1/4" wet suit with with 10# of lead on a belt and the rambo knife on the leg. Yea an image to grin about by todays standards. You had to weight so as to not be too light on the surface, soi you couldnt force your way down to 20 ft, but not to be too heavy when you hit 40' and the suit compressed. below 50' you were always as few # heavy and a little less than neut on the surface with a full tank. you probably only had 60 cuft to breath but that was still 5# weight shift and no device to comp for it. Emergency weight dumping was a necessary skill. being able to swim with your rig for perhaps 1/2 mile to shore when you were mayby 2# positive, was a necessary skill. Thier version of CESA was a necessary skill because of the J valve and its pitfalls. Being able to skillfully buddy breath was a necessary skill and OFTEN used. We had horse collars (that you could manually slowly inflate) that all you had to do was pull the string and you inflated like a raft to keep you up. (Try that from 80 ft') The local shop always had co2 refills ready for purchace and sold plenty. There was a definate need for swimming skills and lower body strength to kick you home or else you had to dump weight(lead or the rig) or vent tanks to get lighter. There is but one way to understand this and that is to do a dive with you bcd hose not connected. All that aside in todays techonology the bcd alone has reduced the course time. Unfortunately the shorter classes, beyond the effects of gear, have been gutted. Understandable as no one has time to do a 40-80 hour class to go from zero to hero master diver like you did in the day. (Todays master diver was the OWD of the 60's) In the day those who dove were a different breed, fundamentally. It was "nothing to it" as we were concerned. WE actually drove cars , not only , with out our seatbelts fastened, but cars that did not have them at all. Todays worst case situations were yesterdays norm. Yes things have changed. They have adapted to new technonlogies to a major extent and that is good. Somehow in the process the gutting got carried away and too much went to the wayside. In the end the why's are not inportant. What is inportant is that todays invincable students think that just because it wasn't taught it means that it has no value and not needed. You dont get to make out with Recessa anne till rescue. You dont learn REAL towing and the like till rescue. You dont get anything about learning about dive areas away from home, such as dive flag requirements, where is a dive tool considered a weapon. The list goes on and on. I dont know of anyonre that can tell me that , as a student, they have done a share air ascent including safety stop with a buddy that is not that responsive perhaps due to loss of body heat from diving in 80 degree water and no suit. That once again you have to wait for till another class. In hind sight anyone can only admire the extent that good instructors go to to patch the holes in thier agency's training. Listening to conversations such as . "where did you learn that?" I learned that in AOW. ect. Its a shame that so many we dump in the water for a 100 ft dive have only the absolute min skills for the card.

 

[supergaijin]

It has been watered down. In the 70s about 1/4 of the people who started the course did not finish. Now almost no one fails because if they fail they do not buy more equipment. The focus then was safety but that takes a backseat to profits now. If you combine todays OW and AOW you get what OW was 40+ years ago.

Did the AOW course even exist in 1970?

 

[Peter Guy]

I love these threads because there is so much opinion and so few facts.

Has the general OW course been "watered down" over the past couple of decades? I don't know -- I wasn't diving 20 years ago.

BUT, I was diving 45+ years ago when I took OW as a freshman in college -- 1966 and got my cert in 1967. Has the class changed? You bet. There are, to me, two big changes -- the first is that in 1966 we spent a fair amount of time skin diving BEFORE blowing bubbles. The second change is that our gear was so "primitive" compared to what we have now -- BCDs, Computers (hell, gauges), Alternate Air Sources, Dry Suits, even small things like SMBs and decent lights.

It is a fact that, during my 1966 class, I had to walk in the snow, uphill both ways (really, honestly) to get to and from my OW class but that was the only harassment. Otherwise what we learned in the classroom doesn't come close to what people are supposed to be taught today. The in-water skills -- honestly, I don't recall them as being any more onerous or comprehensive than what we learn today. We may well have done the "raise the body from the bottom" or a ditch and don but I am not at all convinced doing those at the OW level is important -- actually I am convinced they are not important.

A member of SB who is an educational expert, often discusses educational theory and the concepts of need to know vs. nice to know (my words, not his). I agree with him that the training of a scuba diver should be concentrated on what is needed to be known to be a safe, competent diver and the modern teaching methods seem to do this as long as the instructor is capable of doing it (and I will not get into that can of worms).

 

[RJP]

Depends on the agency. The OW class I teach is 8 weeks with 32 hours of instruction. 16 classroom, 16 pool. .

Any reason to extend this out over 8 weeks? Content and number of hours makes sense, but 8 weeks seems like an unnecessarily burdensome length of time from a calendar standpoint. What benefits do you see from doing small chunks of time spread out over 8 weeks vs say doing 10-12hrs a week for three weeks?

 

[Rich Keller]

Did the AOW course even exist in 1970?

I have no idea. I just bought a tank, reg and a book on how to use them and started diving without taking a course of any kind in 1970. Got OW certified in 74 when getting fills was becoming a problem and went to commercial diving school in 79 without ever looking into additional scuba certifications.

 

[scubadada]

So, I did training in the old days and in relatively modern times. I did Basic Scuba Diver with the LA County Underwater Unit in 1970 and then trained in the PADI system, doing OW, AOW, Rescue, and a few specialties between 1997 and 2005. This is what I recently wrote on a separate thread:

So, the main difference is what you came out with after OW training. I came out of my LA County Basic Scuba Diver course with the skills to be an independent diver under the usual conditions in Southern California, and did so. Much later, late 90s, I recertified with my son in the PADI system. Preparedness following OW certification was considerably less than my initial certification. Ultimately, I did AOW, Rescue, and a few specialties. Altogether, my PADI training was quite good, though I would imagine only a small fraction of divers stick to it this long and achieve this level of training. Either pathway is able to produce well trained, competent divers

The LA County training took place on weekends over 6 weeks with mornings in the classroom and afternoons in the pool. I no longer remember the exact hours but the total was in excess of 60. We finished with 6 ocean dives, 4 beach in SoCal and 2 shore dives in Catalina. My PADI OW class was in Grand Cayman over 4 full days, total hours was probably around the 30 mentioned in an earlier thread. Did 4 checkout dives, 2 to 40 feet and 2 to 60 feet. Dived to 95 feet on dive 5 and 100 feet on dive 7 with the same operator off the North Wall following certification.

 

[Bob DBF]

When considering hours, be mindful that a lot of self-study can come into play. When I did the OW course (started in 2005; finished last 2 check-out dives April '06), we didn't have e-learning. I bought the OW manual and spent a lot of time reading & studying it. I don't know how typical that is, but if you want the knowledge, it's there, and at least in my book was pretty well-written and easily absorbed. Classroom time revisited some content, but in my mind, the goal was to walk in already knowing the material and ready to pass the test.

Richard.

That was how I learned to dive initially in '63, the instructor, my dad, had a couple of dives on me at that time. I do believe my dad, and "The New Science of Skin and SCUBA Diving", was a good instructor as I'm not dead yet. Although another instructor may have had more experience, there was not necessarily assurance that they did. Today one can train OW divers and hand them a card from say "Richards SCUBA Diving and Tire Repair" and it may not be illegal but it won't let you buy air, over 50 years ago it was more common and you didn't need any credentials to buy air. When shops required a C-Card to buy air, they will only take Agency cards and the day of the independent instructor ended.

In my 1980 class the same preperation was expected, however it was done by assignment, tested, and discussed with the instructor. When everyone understood the material in the assignment, we covered what was not in the book and on to general information about diving. The three hour class sometimes turned into four, some weeks. The "extra" material over those 6 weeks of classroom would have probably covered the AOW, Rescue and some of the DM book. It revolved around how to responsibly dive and increase your skills, without becoming a danger to yourself and others. This was done because, at the time, very few divers took further training.

My training might have been different since it was a NAUI / PADI class in a rural area with the main access to the ocean was the NorCal coast in the Mendocino County area. I had also been SCUBA diving for years, and the instructor made a point of insuring the class would hold my attention. At the time you could "pass" the class and not be certified if the instructor decided you were not ready for certification, I believe that is the reason he parted ways with PADI later on.



Bob
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That's my point, people, by and large, are not taught that diving can be deadly, they are taught how safe it is, and they are not equipped with the skills, taught and trained to the level required to be useful in an emergency.

 

[Nemrod]

There is still good instruction and good divers being trained today but, no, it is not the same, no way it could be, too much has changed.

The courses I took in the late 60s and 70s were much more split between lecture and theory and then pool/ocean. They were much longer, 8 weeks or longer and met twice a week or both days of a weekend.

People failed. A lot of them.

You had to be able to swim and swim well. There were no BCs or arm floaties.

Watermanship was expected as a prerequisite. Most of the people entering the sport were already water people and comfortable and at home in the water.

The training was much more physical.

There was harassment, turning air off, ripping masks off, yanking regs out of the mouth. Simulating entanglements. Swimming with no mask while buddy breathing around and around the pool, both without mask etc.

Most people learned from places like the YMCA or college courses instead of retail dive stores.

Equipment, where do I begin, it was different and unlike today, equipment dependency was not really possible since there was very little to depend upon.

A lot of free diving, had to recover, I think it was ten pounds, from twenty feet and swim two lengths of the pool.

There was a lot of class time spent on gas laws, calculating SAC and extrapolating that to underwater use. The dive tables were a part of every class. The SPG was not ubiquitous, the J valve was.

Each water portion of the class ended with lap swimming. Sometimes in gear and weighted other times without any gear. And I definitely recall what failed me in 1966 (I was just a child) I could not lift the double tanks and do the over the shoulder flip. The second thing that failed me was the swim sans gear with a weight belt on. I was a swimmer, on a swim team, not like I was not good at it. But two years growth and when I was fourteen I completed the course with no issues.

There were tests, written and water skills.

Then, and my instructor was exactly like the fictional hero, at least to me:

Now:

My typical equipment in my advanced class in 72:

My equipment now:

N

 

[scubadada]

The swimming, underwater swimming, and breath holding were reasonably challenging but I had been a competitive swimmer since the age of 4 and played water polo. Even the harassment seemed pretty mild compared to what went on under the water in water polo.