I suspect there are several issues at play in the discussion.
1. ‘Where should something be taught’ in the process of dive training, and how much should be taught at the outset. There is an easy solution: EVERYTHING should be part of the Open Water Diver course. We should teach perfect buoyancy control, and how to achieve GREAT trim, and how to fin, and how to use the oral inflator. We should teach them how to rescue themselves or another diver, and how to jump off a dive boat (even if we are teaching in a lake in the middle of Nebraska), and how to share air, and select equipment, and breathe from a free flowing regulator, and quantify their air consumption, and how to use a light to dive at night, and how to deploy a DSMB, and . . . . . .
I may be missing something, but it seems that a competent instructor realizes that EVERYTHING can’t be taught in 2-3 weekends, so that all-inclusive course has to be longer, to include all that incredibly valuable, and absolutely essential training. Frankly, it can’t be done in less than 6 months, if the student divers are only available on weekends. But, we have a constitutional right to expect our students to be serious, and committed, and be available every weekend. After all, that's how I was trained in MY OW course - back in the day - as a PERFECT DIVER. And, when I TRAINED, I walked to the water every time I participated in training, wearing my full scuba rig. And, it was 5 miles from the car to the pool, and it was uphill all the way, both coming and going, and I did it in the snows of south Florida.
Hmm. Maybe, there is a flaw in that approach. For some reason, students want to proceed at their own pace. And, some students don’t want to make a career out of getting their initial dive certification, nor do they want to spend $4000 on their Open Water instruction. And, some students JUST want to be underwater tourists, and see some pretty fish. And, maybe they only want to do that underwater tourist thing just ONE time – on their dream vacation, or on their honeymoon in the Caribbean. Are they really going to spend 6 months preparing for that one week? Or, am I going to cram so much into 4 weekends (or 8, or even 12) of training that they are completely overwhelmed, learn very little and don’t even enjoy their vacation – which might INCLUDE some diving, but is not ALL ABOUT diving?
Now, some Instructors are only able and willing to teach the ‘all or none’ approach – and they put EVERYTHING into their Open Water course (of which they are immensely proud). Fine. And, they get (a few) customers who want to learn that way, and are willing to pay for that. Fantastic! Of course, that’s not really the prevailing market, so the number of dive students who want, and are willing/able to pay for, that approach is limited. Nonetheless, if that is what you want to do as an instructor, go for it, by all means! But, just maybe there are others – instructors and agencies – who see the possibility of – dare I say it - a bigger market, and a way of expanding the market by doing things differently.
Here’s a thought. Maybe, we can parse dive instruction into smaller, manageable, discrete ‘pieces’ in a way that allows for students to proceed at their own pace, and allows for the underwater tourist to meet their needs, and for the ‘divers’ to meet theirs. And, allows for the Instructor to be reasonably compensated for their time, all the way through. Just a thought. I wonder . . . have any training agencies thought along those lines? OK, rhetorical question. Some have. And, apparently they have been successful. And, that seems to make other people envious. It is interesting that PADI has been compared to Amazon, and Wal-Mart in this thread. Sam Walton grew up in a family of very modest means. He started in business after college as a J.C. Penny management trainee, earning a whopping $75 a month. But, when he died, he was worth $8.6 billion. Jeff Bezos also started life in a family of very modest means. But, he was bright, he had big ideas. He started Amazon as an online bookstore. He told investors that they would probably (70% chance) lose their investment by Amazon going bankrupt. Today, he is worth >$150 billion. Both men had an idea, and people were (more than) willing to pay for it. Neither of these men sold smoke and mirrors. They offered value for the dollar paid. How many of us, as scuba Instructors would NOT wish to be paid more for what we do? Nobody HAS to shop at Wal-Mart, or order through Amazon. But – surprise, surprise – (a WHOLE LOT of) people do.
2. It is easy to criticize PADI for some of the ‘specialties’ offered under the PADI banner. One thing that PADI emphasizes in dive training is, ‘Make it fun’. Is there something wrong with that?
KELEMVOR:
For example, seemingly useless certifications offered by PADI seem to support the idea. Zombie Apocalypse Diver is the most obvious one.
tursiops:
I hope you guys realize that most of the specialities people make fun of are not actually PADI specialites, but rather are written by individuals and shops. All PADI does is make sure that "distinctive" specialty is neither technically incorrect nor dangerous, and then issues the card...for a fee, of course! . . . So go ahead and make fun of the dive shops doing the Zombie Apocalypse distinctive specialty, but apparently it fills a need or it would not still exist.
The Zombie Apocalypse Diver Distinctive Specialty is a good example. I don’t teach it, but I have seen it being taught, and I have talked to many ‘student’ divers taking it - virtually EVERY one of whom talked about how much fun they had doing it, even the ones who said they originally only took it to get the card. And, by the way, ZA is a PADI DISTINCTIVE specialty. Some Instructor came up with the idea (not PADI staff), submitted the application for recognition to PADI, which reviewed it for safety and standardization, and originality, and ‘approved’ it. PADI makes money from each certification issued, but the originator makes the real money – selling the course materials, etc. I admire him, and his entrepreneurial spirit. He created a course, that – apparently – a lot of divers want to take, for various reasons, he went out and got agency credentialing, and then made money from it! Are the snarky comments about it more a sign of jealousy, that he had the idea, and pursued it, and profited from it. We’re spending a weekend teaching OW students for $100/head (about $3/hour), and this guy sits back and collects money for . . . his IDEAS?
3. Why are there SO MANY specialties?
seeker242:
What other agency teaches DSMB diver specialty class? Shouldn't that be included already in basic dive training? Why should you need to take an extra class, and pay more money, to lean what you should have learned the first time?
Let’s suppose I want to teach someone how to deploy a DSMB. And, I have A LOT of diver friends who want me to show them how to do that. Am I going to be a very generous friend, and do it all for free (BTW, buying me a beer afterward is just the same as me doing it for free, and frankly my taste in beer is usually better developed, and MORE expensive than that of the person buying)? OR, am I going to charge for it, at a reasonable rate? That's a no-brainer – my time is valuable, and I charge for my time in my day job, why shouldn’t I do that in scuba? So, I come up with a (non-trivial) charge, I take the diver to the water and teach them how to ‘shoot a bag’. Now, if I do this 100 times, everything will go swimmingly well 99 times. But, let’s assume that on one occasion, in the process of learning how to do the skill, the ‘student’ diver is injured. Notwithstanding my explicit, detailed instructions, and notwithstanding my absolutely terrific, neutrally buoyant, clean, crisp demonstration, as well as me hovering right next to them while they deploy the bag, and the fact that 99 divers before them learned the skill without problems, they manage to get themselves tangled in the line attached to their lift bag, and make an uncontrolled ascent to the surface, and are injured. Their treatment costs them a lot of money and guess what – they come back after me for compensation – somehow their incompetence was MY fault. Absent any ‘standards’ that guided what I taught them, based on my training and experience as a diver and as an instructor of 99 other divers, I am in a pretty weak legal position. Plus, my professional insurance only covers me when I am teaching in the context of an accepted, approved training course. But, if I do that exact same teaching in the context of an accepted, approved training course, where I followed the standards, promulgated by a recognized international training agency, to the letter (and the student signed a liability waiver, etc.), if the same thing happens, I now have two partners (PADI, and my insurance company) in my defense. And, as long as I did things by the book, those partners are pretty d****d effective in mobilizing resources in my defense. So, heck yes, I choose to teach an approved DSMB specialty, for a fee, instead of being a friendly helpful diver, and doing it for free, and putting myself at risk (or putting yet another skill into an already crowded OW course).
