Diver Training, Has It Really Been Watered Down???

[Edward3c]

It may indeed be a myth these days but it predates the internet by a long way and may have been true back then because no-one had octos. It was certainly quoted in my ScotSAC training back in the day.

That will have been in the days when buddy-breathing from the single reg we used was the norm. And yes there were times when the reg was just taken.

 

[shurite7]

We teach a few skills that are no longer "mandated" but that we think are still good skills to learn and understand.

Can you be specific and state what skills you are referring to?

That being said. Having spoken to people who went through it the old school way, the classes of today certainly seem underwhelming.

How so? The main difference that I've seen from classes way back vs now is stress factors (sometimes referred to as harrassment) were added in order to "teach" people to hold themselves together if something was to go wrong. Swimming skills were emphasized more so than what I see today.

I do not believe we are teaching people to dive anymore. We are simply teaching them how to not die. The rest is up to them.

Can't say I agree with this, yet don't entirely disagree. PADI and NAUI's open water course is designed to create an autonomous diver who can plan a dive and execute the plan safely. What I've noticed, and this is the way I was taught, is the students were required to learn the skill conducting it once maybe twice in the pool, then do it again at the lake/sea. After the last dive my instructor told the group "congrats, you now have the certification to go out and learn how to dive" My thought was 'what?', I just paid for a course to learn how to dive and now he was saying I didn't learn how to dive. I didn't understand his comment until I became an instructor and learned how courses were set up. That is, a student is taught the needed skills and must demonstrate he/she can conduct the skill during the certification dives. After that, it is up to the student to go out and master the skill by practicing and diving more. The later statement really stuck out to me when I took my first PSD course.

This of course, brings up the other issue, many people don't take the time to practice their skills. They just want to flop around with the fish. The more serious, perhaps those who thoroughly enjoy diving, practice our skills, take more classes, dive often as possible, move onto more challenging diving such as tech, and for some gripe how courses have been watered down.

 

[KenGordon]

This is something I've always wondered about. Several of my former instructors told me this and I heard it a lot when I was a DM. As I stated above, I have had to donate numerous times and have witnessed a couple OOA situations. Not once did a person reach for second stage that was in a person's mouth. They either gave the out of air sign or reached for the octo. In several cases, extremely low on air while at depth, or reg failing - once a piece of pine apple was stuck in the diaphragm from the previous renter who puked in it and lots of free flow in cold water, that I dealt with the divers gave me erratic signs (one right after another) such as something wrong, out of air, thumbs up, just pointing to the reg in their mouth with gigantic eyes, or shove his/hers spg in my face due to . At that point I donated, my long hose (primary), of course. I think many people, instructors, tell this story to emphasize a point, which is questionable good teaching practices. I wonder how many of those people have actually witnessed this. Perhaps a couple, but less than what is perceived.

Divers and dive instructors are not very good with facts.

When BSAC still had a forum I explicitly asked this question. Someone was good enough to review 10 years or so of incident reports covering 173 (if I remember correctly) OOA situations. Almost everyone had tried to follow their training. Mostly people were diving secondary take or donate with only a couple of primary donate. The scary bit was that a large percentage (I remember 40 but could easily be wrong) were not successful. They didn’t all die but might have led to fast ascents or other outcome notbas intended.

Having read the incident reports I have a near endless supply of examples of people getting it wrong. Most I use involve ignoring whichever point is being made in a lecture. Very few are random events. So the point is to make them understand the reason why we do a thing the way we do it. Telling them that there are marauding divers out to steal their gas without asking seems just designed to scare people.

Of course in the U.K. nobody will ever find you to steal your reg.

 

[sigxbill]

Since this thread has taken a side note regarding buddy breathing and 17 times required to be proficient at it, I thought I would share my related experience.

A couple of years and a few rec classes after my autonomous diver cert, I thought I was a bit of a hot shot diver - lol. I had just bought a new regulator (1st and 2nd stage) and was anxious to try it out. I convinced a less qualified buddy to accompany me 35m down into La Jolla Canyon. Although I had been taught to share gas via an octopus, for some reason I didn't have enough second stages for us each to have two, so we each only had one second stage. I thought this was enough because mine wouldn't fail - it was the latest greatest reg on the market, and worst case scenario, we would buddy breath.

Because my reg was such a new model, I later discovered that a metal shaving that had been missed in quality control somehow caused it to almost stop delivering gas at 35m! I looked to my buddy and we commenced buddy breathing. It was probably a combination of CO2 that had been steadily building as breathing became more difficult, and panic that made me feel like every breath I got from my buddy’s reg was not enough. When it was my turn, I took longer and longer breaths. I could see the look of diminishing willingness in my buddy’s eyes as he contemplated passing me his regulator each time. I knew we needed to move, so I went back to my almost non-working reg and ascended rapidly to about 20m. Fortunately at this depth it could deliver enough gas to complete the dive and no one was hurt.

To this day I realize how easily this could have been a double fatality, and would never depend on the backup plan of buddy breathing again.

Cheers

 

[Bob DBF]

Part of difference in the experience of being mugged for ones primary may have to do with the training differences between the Agency system as opposed to the Club system. The ongoing mentoring to develop club members would reinforce skills after training, which has no parallel in agency training here. This would tend to give the average club diver more practice of skills.

Bob

 

[J-Vo]

Years ago I worked with a former Navy SEAL who stated he and his buddy were taught to hold each other in a head lock position when practicing / conducting buddy breathing and were required to practice it extensively to avoid failure.

This is how I was taught. Not sure if it was IDEA or my former special forces instructor who set that standard.

 

[Clayton122]

Can you be specific and state what skills you are referring to?



How so? The main difference that I've seen from classes way back vs now is stress factors (sometimes referred to as harrassment) were added in order to "teach" people to hold themselves together if something was to go wrong. Swimming skills were emphasized more so than what I see today.



Can't say I agree with this, yet don't entirely disagree. PADI and NAUI's open water course is designed to create an autonomous diver who can plan a dive and execute the plan safely. What I've noticed, and this is the way I was taught, is the students were required to learn the skill conducting it once maybe twice in the pool, then do it again at the lake/sea. After the last dive my instructor told the group "congrats, you now have the certification to go out and learn how to dive" My thought was 'what?', I just paid for a course to learn how to dive and now he was saying I didn't learn how to dive. I didn't understand his comment until I became an instructor and learned how courses were set up. That is, a student is taught the needed skills and must demonstrate he/she can conduct the skill during the certification dives. After that, it is up to the student to go out and master the skill by practicing and diving more. The later statement really stuck out to me when I took my first PSD course.

This of course, brings up the other issue, many people don't take the time to practice their skills. They just want to flop around with the fish. The more serious, perhaps those who thoroughly enjoy diving, practice our skills, take more classes, dive often as possible, move onto more challenging diving such as tech, and for some gripe how courses have been watered down.

Naui, and more predominately PADI, I think have done the best they can to needle down the courses to the bare bones in order to make diving as commercially accessible as possible. More divers = more shoppers = more $$$. As far as I am concerned, they have managed to needle the courses down to the bare minimum and protect themselves from liability. I believe the motivation for that is $$$. This is my biggest criticism of the organizations.

 

[boulderjohn]

Naui, and more predominately PADI, I think have done the best they can to needle down the courses to the bare bones in order to make diving as commercially accessible as possible. More divers = more shoppers = more $$$. As far as I am concerned, they have managed to needle the courses down to the bare minimum and protect themselves from liability. I believe the motivation for that is $$$. This is my biggest criticism of the organizations.

And like many, you make this criticism in the face of the fact that the standards for OW diving have been increased in the last quarter century or more. Or do you mean "needling down" as a phrases that means "adding more content"? Or is your strategy to counter this indisputable fact with vague and unprovable statements about "agency culture"?

 

[TMHeimer]

Naui, and more predominately PADI, I think have done the best they can to needle down the courses to the bare bones in order to make diving as commercially accessible as possible. More divers = more shoppers = more $$$. As far as I am concerned, they have managed to needle the courses down to the bare minimum and protect themselves from liability. I believe the motivation for that is $$$. This is my biggest criticism of the organizations.

At least SOME truth to that. Courses are perhaps geared to producing as they say "vacation" divers who will be somewhat supervised. I guess my selfish take on that is that courses should be more geared toward the "serious" diver. While equipment has changed over years to make diving easier, perhaps even "safer", the hours of OW courses have apparently been lessened by at least 2/3. Students are required to "master" the pool skills, but as discussed on a long ago thread, there is no definition of "master". I hear that some of the old 30 hour classes included "harassment" and unnecessary physical tests. I wonder though if they also included doing a skill, like mask clearing, successfully 9 out of 10 times, as opposed to once (where you can also "pass" by blowing the water out 10 times as opposed to the one time it really takes).
But, I got certified in 2005, so can't answer those questions myself.

 

[boulderjohn]

Students are required to "master" the pool skills, but as discussed on a long ago thread, there is no definition of "master".

Mastery is specifically defined in the PADI standards. It uses the concept of mastery defined originally by Benjamin Bloom in 1968 in the educational process called "mastery learning." Mastery Learning is the instructional concept used by almost all dive agencies today. I am sorry you never learned about it, either while you were a scuba instructor or while you were a professional teacher.