elvisisalive
Registered
I do not post here very often so excuse me if my post does not follow an organized manner. As someone who has taken GUE Fundamentals I feel that I can offer something useful to this discussion, but I do not have answers for some of the statements that I will make. So please, read my post carfully as I do not wish any hard feelings.
1. Anti Hero - "technical diving: which Fundies was designed as a gateway too." It was my understanding that originally Fundamentals was a workshop; and there wasn't a pass, provisional, fail. It was brought about to show divers the fundamental skill/control components that divers SHOULD have. I think that the purpose of Fundamentals has changed.
2. Peter - "...watcher...didn't stop the doer... We didn't know we were supposed to stop..." This is an extremely important statement to me. If you didn't know you were supposed to stop the drill, why not? Think about this please. Maybe it wasn't learned. Maybe it wasn't taught. Maybe it was said, once, at the begining of day 1. Now it is the end of day 3. All twelve hour days, with 8 hours in the water each day. One mistake, no pass, gateway is now shut. What purpose is served by withholding the pass? Is this really what GUE wants out of the training? For this student to walk away after spending lot's of money traveling, or flying an instructor in, only to have to: travel again, or fly the instructor back and have to pay the instructor again for another evaluation dive? It is in this type of situation that for this diver to hear statements like, "but did you learn alot? ... don't take the class with the goal of passing." that I think Fundamentals as a class misses the point that it was originally designed to make. I think that the point of Fundamentals, as a class was originally designed to make, has changed.
3. Each divers success in a Fundamentals class is now tightly bound to the other divers success in the same class. With varying levels of experience in any one class, how does the instructor evaluate each diver seperately from the team they are in class with? It is not enough to say, "don't let the other divers in your team screw you up in the water." It also in not a fair statement to make that if this were a technical dive would you have managed it well. This is not a technical class, so why evaluate it like one? And for the tech pass: all it means is that you have shown the control to advance into the technical end of the training. Not that you are able/competent/proficient enough to PASS technical training. How could you pass it if you havn't been trained at it yet? If I am incorrect in this last statement I apologize. It seems though that although Fundamentals is NOT a failures based class, that more and more often the students are being shown failure based situations, and if they are not able to manage that situation, which they shouldn't be at this level, they do not earn a pass. Is this what Fundamentals was originally created to do? Or has the focus of Fundamentals changed?
4. One of the things that I have read, and heard, and really got me wanting to take Fundamentals was that I would learn WHY. For every question I could possibly ask, the instructor would teach me WHY. One of the statements that I have read/heard with increasing regularity as of late though is that people didn't learn HOW. Without the HOW part the WHY falls short of true learning. Without the HOW, how does the diver walk out of class with a provisional and practice correctly and re-evaluate in 6 months successfully? Is this what Fundamentals was originally like, or has something changed?
I am not a wise man so I fall short in lot's of things. This next statement may be one of these times when I fall very short, so please help me to understand if I completly miss. It SEEMS that with Fundamental being grown into what it is today, that it was realized that students were getting more information in Fundies. But with so much being dedicated to higher learning, less was being achieved in the water, and the success of the class was diminishing. So Primer was developed as a means of initially showing divers a lot of the HOW components. HOW to do the propulsion techniques, HOW to do the Basic 5 skills, HOW to set up your gear (tying bolt snaps, initially adjusting the harness...), and most importantly to show each diver HOW they look in the water with video. Is this accurate? That with Primer on the map the goal of Fundamentals has changed? Did Fundamentats always have 12+ hours of lectures? How long has Fundamentals also been certifying Nitrox? Gas management, dissimilar tanks? With so much time being spent on these subjects the course loses at least one full day in the water. But it is the control in the water that I THINK is what takes the longest to achieve. Has the focus of Fundamentals shifted to more above water learning, and less in water control because Primer does that now?
1. Anti Hero - "technical diving: which Fundies was designed as a gateway too." It was my understanding that originally Fundamentals was a workshop; and there wasn't a pass, provisional, fail. It was brought about to show divers the fundamental skill/control components that divers SHOULD have. I think that the purpose of Fundamentals has changed.
2. Peter - "...watcher...didn't stop the doer... We didn't know we were supposed to stop..." This is an extremely important statement to me. If you didn't know you were supposed to stop the drill, why not? Think about this please. Maybe it wasn't learned. Maybe it wasn't taught. Maybe it was said, once, at the begining of day 1. Now it is the end of day 3. All twelve hour days, with 8 hours in the water each day. One mistake, no pass, gateway is now shut. What purpose is served by withholding the pass? Is this really what GUE wants out of the training? For this student to walk away after spending lot's of money traveling, or flying an instructor in, only to have to: travel again, or fly the instructor back and have to pay the instructor again for another evaluation dive? It is in this type of situation that for this diver to hear statements like, "but did you learn alot? ... don't take the class with the goal of passing." that I think Fundamentals as a class misses the point that it was originally designed to make. I think that the point of Fundamentals, as a class was originally designed to make, has changed.
3. Each divers success in a Fundamentals class is now tightly bound to the other divers success in the same class. With varying levels of experience in any one class, how does the instructor evaluate each diver seperately from the team they are in class with? It is not enough to say, "don't let the other divers in your team screw you up in the water." It also in not a fair statement to make that if this were a technical dive would you have managed it well. This is not a technical class, so why evaluate it like one? And for the tech pass: all it means is that you have shown the control to advance into the technical end of the training. Not that you are able/competent/proficient enough to PASS technical training. How could you pass it if you havn't been trained at it yet? If I am incorrect in this last statement I apologize. It seems though that although Fundamentals is NOT a failures based class, that more and more often the students are being shown failure based situations, and if they are not able to manage that situation, which they shouldn't be at this level, they do not earn a pass. Is this what Fundamentals was originally created to do? Or has the focus of Fundamentals changed?
4. One of the things that I have read, and heard, and really got me wanting to take Fundamentals was that I would learn WHY. For every question I could possibly ask, the instructor would teach me WHY. One of the statements that I have read/heard with increasing regularity as of late though is that people didn't learn HOW. Without the HOW part the WHY falls short of true learning. Without the HOW, how does the diver walk out of class with a provisional and practice correctly and re-evaluate in 6 months successfully? Is this what Fundamentals was originally like, or has something changed?
I am not a wise man so I fall short in lot's of things. This next statement may be one of these times when I fall very short, so please help me to understand if I completly miss. It SEEMS that with Fundamental being grown into what it is today, that it was realized that students were getting more information in Fundies. But with so much being dedicated to higher learning, less was being achieved in the water, and the success of the class was diminishing. So Primer was developed as a means of initially showing divers a lot of the HOW components. HOW to do the propulsion techniques, HOW to do the Basic 5 skills, HOW to set up your gear (tying bolt snaps, initially adjusting the harness...), and most importantly to show each diver HOW they look in the water with video. Is this accurate? That with Primer on the map the goal of Fundamentals has changed? Did Fundamentats always have 12+ hours of lectures? How long has Fundamentals also been certifying Nitrox? Gas management, dissimilar tanks? With so much time being spent on these subjects the course loses at least one full day in the water. But it is the control in the water that I THINK is what takes the longest to achieve. Has the focus of Fundamentals shifted to more above water learning, and less in water control because Primer does that now?
) That said, in my Fundies class, days were long, but all in-water activity was done at the start of the day, so we were considerably less tired. Lectures and what-not commenced after the diving was done.
