Horrible Divers Everywhere?

[NAUI Wowie]

They don’t really try to train people to be long term proficient divers nowadays, they teach people just enough to know how to use scuba gear and just enough personal skills so they don’t kill themselves. Before boulderjohn jumps me about standards not being changed in PADI training, that might be true, but I’ve been witness to OW training being so minimized and barely grazed over that it’s a miracle more people aren’t getting hurt. Basic OW standards might not have been broken but the effort to thoroughly implant a solid foundation is too time consuming and would cost too much money for most people. Maybe they were taught everything in the book, maybe they weren’t, who knows? What’s the percentage of classes taught worldwide that skip over stuff?

So the result is you get a bunch of bottom crawlers who kind of know how to huff and puff on a second stage and kind of remember what a BC is for, and they know they should never hold their breath, but there are other classes for learning anything above that.
Will they ever take those classes? I don’t know the stats on that, but I doubt the majority will.

how good was training in the 1960s? on average? id bet a lot of misinformation was around.

and on the flipside the best scuba training was the YMCA , my father was a scuba instructor there in the 60s. NAUI operated the YMCAs at least in PA at that time.

its all a mixed bag whatever era you are from. pluses and minuses everywhere. I will say my equipment is five thousand times better than the scuba tanks my dad built and had hydroed and the wetsuits he made by hand. .....serious..... he took 50cf firebottles and made them into twins and his buddy was so tall and gangly ...basically a basketball player....that he had no wetsuit that would fit him so my dad made him one.


before casting stones at current times or the past realize that its the individual and not the training agency that makes a great diver or a really bad diver

 

[AfterDark]

how good was training in the 1960s? on average? id bet a lot of misinformation was around.

and on the flipside the best scuba training was the YMCA , my father was a scuba instructor there in the 60s. NAUI operated the YMCAs at least in PA at that time.

its all a mixed bag whatever era you are from. pluses and minuses everywhere. I will say my equipment is five thousand times better than the scuba tanks my dad built and had hydroed and the wetsuits he made by hand. .....serious..... he took 50cf firebottles and made them into twins and his buddy was so tall and gangly ...basically a basketball player....that he had no wetsuit that would fit him so my dad made him one.


before casting stones at current times or the past realize that its the individual and not the training agency that makes a great diver or a really bad diver

Well, my training by NASDS in 1968 was good enough to get me thru 50+ years of diving, so far.

My over priced PADI AOW card was just to mollify charter boat ops in other areas. I slept during the class room, but did enjoy the dives they were all boat dives to cool dive sites, it was however much more than a charter would have been. The instructor did manage to teach me something even though I've been diving longer then him. He showed me how to use garden washers on the posts for the spring straps on my Mares fins. A very expensive tip.
The extremely over priced nitrox card is among the most useless money I've ever spent on diving.

 

[ofg-1]

Ah yes, the 1960's. Nixon was in the White House, Vietnam was going so well, filthy hippies at Woodstock, Archie Bunker on TV, $1.30 minimum wage....Who doesn't long for those times?

 

[DeepSeaExplorer]

Ah yes, the 1960's. Nixon was in the White House, Vietnam was going so well, filthy hippies at Woodstock, Archie Bunker on TV, $1.30 minimum wage....Who doesn't long for those times?

Ahh... the good old days... Let’s wind the clock back so we can enjoy the good old days again.

Good old days that never really existed in the first place.

 

[AfterDark]

Ah yes, the 1960's. Nixon was in the White House, Vietnam was going so well, filthy hippies at Woodstock, Archie Bunker on TV, $1.30 minimum wage....Who doesn't long for those times?

With all the hating and mass killings going on, and all the poorly trained divers, this is a much better time than the 1960's?

 

[Jcp2]

With all the hating and mass killings going on, and all the poorly trained divers, this is a much better time than the 1960's?

Depends on who you are. I would say that if I were my current age now in the 1960’s that I would not have been able to accomplish what I have, not because of lack of ability (I would be the same) but because of lack of opportunities related to my appearance.

 

[ofg-1]

With all the hating and mass killings going on, and all the poorly trained divers, this is a much better time than the 1960's?

Yes, we have the internet.

 

[Esprise Me]

My over priced PADI AOW card was just to mollify charter boat ops in other areas. I slept during the class room...

I'm sure it must've been frustrating to have to take a class aimed at new divers after you've been diving for 50 years just to keep going to new dive sites at the same level of difficulty. And while I'm sure your comment about sleeping through the class portion was a bit of rhetorical hyperbole, I don't think it serves your point well. Of course you didn't learn anything if you were asleep! Also, after 50 years of diving, you might expect to have learned everything PADI tries to impress on newer divers, but that doesn't mean your training was more rigorous; it could just mean experience is the best teacher.

There are a couple things I feel I should've been taught in my classes, and if someone can show me that those or other important skills used to be part of the curriculum and were dropped in the interest of time, I'm open to being persuaded that training really was better back in the day. But from what I've seen, it looks like almost the opposite; there was stuff we didn't know and therefore didn't teach back then, stuff people who have dived continuously ever since have heard about or figured out on their own in the meantime, but people who stopped diving and figured they could just pick up again missed out on. Like, um, using your BC instead of kicking constantly, and checking your SPG once in a while and having a more detailed plan than "come up when your reg starts breathing hard," as I observed last weekend from a guy my dad's age who got certified when he was younger than me.

The extremely over priced nitrox card is among the most useless money I've ever spent on diving.

Why? Do you think the course doesn't teach enough, or just that there isn't enough to learn to justify that kind of investment? Or just that there's no point in diving Nitrox? Personally, I really liked that course; I felt it really helped clarify some concepts that we covered in OW but didn't spend a lot of time on. Which worked out well for me, because honestly in my OW course I was kinda thinking "yup, DCS, narcosis, can I just get in 20 feet of water now and look at fish?" But by the time I took Nitrox just a month and a half later, I realized this was not going to be one of those things I tried once, liked, but rarely or never got around to doing again; it was becoming an obsession, and I wanted to understand everything about it.

 

[Steve_C]

I beg new divers to just keep on diving.

While I agree that doing more diving is good, just diving will not make them a better diver if they dive with others with bad skills and attitudes. Could be just building in more bad habits.

Somewhere along the way, be it class, mentor, or whatever many folks need some feedback.

 

[AfterDark]

I'm sure it must've been frustrating to have to take a class aimed at new divers after you've been diving for 50 years just to keep going to new dive sites at the same level of difficulty. And while I'm sure your comment about sleeping through the class portion was a bit of rhetorical hyperbole, I don't think it serves your point well. Of course you didn't learn anything if you were asleep! Also, after 50 years of diving, you might expect to have learned everything PADI tries to impress on newer divers, but that doesn't mean your training was more rigorous; it could just mean experience is the best teacher.

There are a couple things I feel I should've been taught in my classes, and if someone can show me that those or other important skills used to be part of the curriculum and were dropped in the interest of time, I'm open to being persuaded that training really was better back in the day. But from what I've seen, it looks like almost the opposite; there was stuff we didn't know and therefore didn't teach back then, stuff people who have dived continuously ever since have heard about or figured out on their own in the meantime, but people who stopped diving and figured they could just pick up again missed out on. Like, um, using your BC instead of kicking constantly, and checking your SPG once in a while and having a more detailed plan than "come up when your reg starts breathing hard," as I observed last weekend from a guy my dad's age who got certified when he was younger than me.


Why? Do you think the course doesn't teach enough, or just that there isn't enough to learn to justify that kind of investment? Or just that there's no point in diving Nitrox? Personally, I really liked that course; I felt it really helped clarify some concepts that we covered in OW but didn't spend a lot of time on. Which worked out well for me, because honestly in my OW course I was kinda thinking "yup, DCS, narcosis, can I just get in 20 feet of water now and look at fish?" But by the time I took Nitrox just a month and a half later, I realized this was not going to be one of those things I tried once, liked, but rarely or never got around to doing again; it was becoming an obsession, and I wanted to understand everything about it.

I was sleeping (dozing) because I worked 3rd shift and had to go to work after the class. I read the book cover to cover, learned nothing I didn't already learn in 1968 or since. The nitrox book was the same. I aced both written tests.

The final insult is I never use nitrox, my SAC is such that I derive no increase in BT with nitrox, it's 2x $$ as much as an air fill at my LDS. After decades of diving air including air only deco without getting bent, I ask what's the point? I guess for multi-dives per day <2 I might find some benefit. These days my energy level supports a one tank dive on a good day 2 dives and most of them are >40FSW. Unless one is diving a wreck there's not much to see below 40FSW around here, and you need a light.
Let's leave it at if I had the $400.00 knowing what I know now I'd spend it on something else.