When I took my PADI OW, we met for eight weeks - an hour or two of theory follwed by a pool session. It was a good size class (11 students) and even with two instructors it took a long time to get through all of the exercises. A couple of student had trouble with the mask clearing (including myself) and he took us aside and made us do it a few times until we had it right. On the last pool session, he remembered who had had difficulty in mask clearing and made us all do it again. I hated it, but I understand why he did it. He made sure we did everything, because the people that have difficulty with any one skill won't stand up and say "I need some more practice on this". I would gladly take another course with him. My main dive buddy took a shorter course (still PADI OW, but at that LDS they have the students read the book and take all the quizzes before the first class) and all four dives are done in a single weekend. It just seemed like they were more rushed, and I noticed that she (my dive buddy) didn't seem as well prepared. It's true that we learned some skills without knowing it (underwater dodgeball develops good buoyancy skills - hit the surface or the bottom and you're out) but or most of the stuff he announced what skill we were going to do, then did it himself, and then had each of us do it. Presenting everything in an organized manner made him less likely to miss anything. Some people pick up some stuff better than others. I had trouble at first with mask clearing, but picked up the theory far easier than most in my class. You may have been a perfect student, but I fear that any slower learners may not be up to the standards necessary for safe diving. Let's say I had taken that reader's digest condensed version. I probably wouldn't have got the mask clearing right, and would be diving today with a very strong aversion to removing my mask. Later, while seraching for lobsters, my dive buddy knocks my mask with her fin (this has happened to me). Would I be able to replace and clear it, or panic and rocket to the surface? As an instructor, you basically decide whether or not someone has completed all the basic skills needed to go dive in a relative margin of safety. If the instructor lets people through without requiring all of the necessary skills, the slower students (I'm putting myself in this category) may be missing vital skills. That said, I can understand reluctance to blow the whistle on the guy, but I still feel that you should find some diplomatic way to inform PADI, whether it be anonymously or not. Just say your neighbor is a friend of yours, but you know that every Saturday night he drives ome from the bar totally drunk. But it's close and you are never on that road at that time. Do you report him to the police? What if he ends up killing someone? The instructor I had for my last OW dives told me he keeps the records for 7 years. When I asked about it, he said that every student he taught out there is a liability. If anything happends to any one of them, his actions will be scrutinized.