Wendigo:Perpet1, I have a lesson plan sitting before me right now. I and Walter are not going "beyond what is actually written in the YMCA standard to teach your classes." It is the criteria, period. If you don't believe me, come on down and I will read it to straight out of our manual.
I know that 90% of you all know that we as YMCA instructors teach our student significantly more than the industry thinks is necessary. It's alomst looked upon as a stigma that we "over-educate" our divers. Many of you look down upon us for that very fact. Well, I for one take pride in the fact that some of my OW student are more advanced than many of you were till you took AOW or nitrox classes.
And we will continue to teach exactly what we have been teaching until I am too decrepit to do so.
Yes, you would be in violation of YMCA SCUBA OW certification criterion if you were to exclude teaching PPO2.
That obviously just isnt at all true. I challenge anyone to bring a 3-day PADI or SSI OW student against even the weakest of my YMCA SCUBA OW students. I double dare you.
We create some of the safest and most knowledgable new divers in the world. NAUI is the only other agency that is comparable, in my opinion.
you can flame me as you like now, I kind of expect it :lol3:
OK Proove that PPO2 is required per the YMCA STANDARD. In other words what does the YMCA standard say with regards to Daltons pressure law. I am betting that neither PPO2 nor the word Dalton appear anywhere in your standards. Remember I asked what the "standard" says, Lesson Plans ARE NOT STANDARDS! Now dust off that book on your shelf and see what is actually required PER STANDARD.
As an Instructor you can teach beyond the letter of the standard (at least in most agencies YMCA and NAUI being the two that you pointed out). All I am saying is thet the written standard for both are comperable given that they come from the same place.
For a YMCA instructor to put down the written standard for PADI is kind of funny. Now the way instructors apply it can be discussed and that is completly subjective and you will get a lot of arguement BUT if you put the stnadards used next to each other they will be pretty much the same.
Walter:Since you believe so strongly about leaving out nonessentials from an OW course, perhaps you should start an agency with such standards.
Walter was very pointed that it was the standards that are the base of the arguement. I could reply that sure I will develop my own agency (just kidding but there is a point here someplace) and I will subscribe to the WRSRC and guess what....... my written standard would look just like YMCA, PADI, etc.
I guess I am saying the standards are pretty much the same. Now this says nothing about Instructor quality or how an agency recommends or markets a class. Those things you could argue about (I would not argue because I too have reservations regarding the marketing efforts of some agencies) but do not think for a second the core requirements are that much better.