Jim,
Qouted from your own responses...
"I do believe in continuing education. IMO Scubaboard, The Deco Stop, The Cyber Diver, and all the other on line forums are a form of continuing education. They do not require a checkbook or Visa card.
It is not necessary to take class after class to stay safe.
A safe diver can continue to learn by diving with more experienced divers.
If he never takes another class he is still one of the safest divers I know and I would trust him with my life at any time.
An OW diver who goes out and dives could come here and get a better education on dive theory, safety, planning, and procedures than they could in many formal classes.
THere are likely thousands of divers who stay safe and never take another class."
I dont believe you to be against continuing education. Please correct if me if im wrong. You are for the most part against OW Divers taking additional classes with instructors because you feel it is a waste of their money. You advocate learning, via other divers, books and these online forums.
I dont have a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is the words you choose to use in regards to the diving community instructors. I understand that are alot of crappy instructors, part of the reason why I have chosen my path... It seems you would have us turn into a freebsd software version of a certification organization. Free E learning for all. That is just great... Thats really going to help the diving economy... You definitely dont need my approval, but you obviously seek it from others on this site that listen to , what I believe to be non-sense. Im sure you are a good instructor and you have obviously spent sometime doing your own learning. You obviously care about the safety of other divers, you and I differ on how to get them there. I do not agree with you. That should have been my first comment to you without the rest the garbage I spit out. It is my intention to train better intructors and give more substance based classes.
I didn't at all read into Jim's comments what you did ... then again, perhaps that's because we have years of posting history between us, and tend to share some philosophies about the value of continuing education.
Here's how I see it.
Continuing education, I think, gets marketed too heavily in today's scuba training. That doesn't mean it has no value ... it means that it gets marketed to people in such a way as to get them to sign up for the next class before they even complete the one they're in. I see it all the time ... people who become divemasters just a few months after they began their OW class, and who come out book smart and completely ignorant of real-world diving ... because, well, they haven't really done any. I've seen too many examples of divers doing worthless, 20-minute dives to "get their numbers up" so they could qualify for the next class ... divers who own solo certs who can't hold a safety stop, or who can't descend without crashing into the bottom ... people with DM certs who can't even take a compass heading unless they're kneeling on the bottom. It's way too common ... and to someone involved in the training industry, it should be an embarrassment.
So what's the problem? Certainly the agencies didn't design these classes with the idea that they were going to graduate students who didn't have the skills. But they do.
Why? Well, the way I see it, it's because people are led to believe that in order to gain better access, or improve their skills, or get some form of recognition from their dive club or dive shop, they need the cert. And so the emphasis becomes one of getting the certification, rather than gaining the skills.
You're new here ... stick around and read the tales ... particularly in the New Divers forum ... of divers who come out of AOW complaining that they didn't learn anything. Does that make the AOW a worthless class? I don't think so ... not if it's done properly. It's worthless to those students because they got pushed into it straight out of OW ... before they had a chance to get comfortable with OW skills ... and so they were incapable of gaining from the class the additional skills and knowledge it was designed to teach them.
Jim ... like myself ... believes that divers should get some real-world experience between classes ... get comfortable with what they learned in their last class ... before signing up for the next one. Because the best instructor in the world can't teach you something new if you're still processing the stuff you were supposed to have already learned before starting in on the new stuff.
Classes are but one tool in the diver's toolbox. Certainly they're an important one ... possibly the most important if done properly. But they're not the ONLY tool ... and you can't build a house with just a hammer. You need to use all the tools that are available. Additional tools include online and printed resources like ScubaBoard and Alert Diver. They include personal interaction with more experienced divers ... which is why dive clubs exist. And most of all, they MUST include actually getting in the water and going diving ... and I DON'T mean in the next class. Sooner or later a diver has to cut the umbilical with the instructor or divemaster and strike out on their own. You CAN'T really understand what you've been learning in a class by taking another class ... you're just substituting one artificial environment for another.
Look ... Jim and I are instructors. Do you REALLY believe that we don't see value in classes? Seriously ... I want what's best for my students. If I think they're ready for the next class, I'll happily sign them up. But the LAST thing I want is for some student of mine to get on a forum like ScubaBoard and say that they didn't learn anything ... or that it was a crappy class. And for that reason, if I think they need more bottom time before they'll get the most out of that next class, I'll tell them so ... I might even offer to take them diving, or hook them up with a friend who can mentor them a bit to get them ready for that next level.
Classes aren't a panacea ... if taken in too rapid a succession, they can be an inhibitor ... because you'll be so focused on taking classes that you'll lose sight of what got you into diving in the first place.
I applaud your enthusiasm ... but there's such a thing as too much of a good thing. People who burn out, drop out ... and when a diver loses their enthusiasm for diving and leaves the activity, it harms the industry. You seem pretty well connected ... so you probably have an idea what the dropout rate in scuba diving is. Consider why so many people drop out of it ... I'm sure there's several reasons, but a major one is that they don't feel they're having fun ... and there's only so many discretionary dollars to go around, so having fun is really the priority. Taking crappy classes isn't fun ... and often the reason why the class was crappy is that the student wasn't ready for it yet.
I don't push classes ... never have. I won't accept a student who I think isn't ready. And yanno what? I can go through seven years of student records and tell you confidently that more than 80% of the people I've taught are still diving.
Think about that for a moment ... that's about the reverse of the world-wide trend.
So I ask you ... which one of us is doing a better job of promoting the industry?
There really is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Perhaps what the industry needs to do a bit better is learn how to space those classes out and provide better value for the hours and dollars people spend on them.
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
