Well, you are talking about an additional dive, with an instructor...I am talking about adding supplementary material during the classroom work, for example additional material on the history of tables and the status of deep stops in an EANx class.
Question about bcd remove underwater
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Why would anyone care about presenting additional material to students? That would have to be quite inappropriate to cause objection.
Of course I'm talking about skills/dives. Again, if a student has done AOW with an instructor, they can get credit for deep dive #1. I teach through a shop, and they pay for a 4 dive class. I'm simply trying to give them the full value for what they pay. If I was teaching independently, I would discount the course, but that isn't my call. I find it disappointing that there cannot even be a conversation with PADI about what skills they would agree would be appropriate. Fortunately, I won't be teaching that format anymore, so now it is a non-issue.
PADI may find that you are kind of hard to have a conversation with.
That's true of all agencies.
If you are doing a course as is described by the agency standards and something bad happens, the person suing you will find it nearly impossible to get anyone to believe that you were attempting something too dangerous. If you add something that is not part of standard scuba instruction and something bad happens, the burden will be upon you to prove that what you were doing was safe. You will have the fact that your agency does not include that in its practices working against you. Can you think of any circumstances with any agency for which that would not be true?
PADI simply says that if you include something extra in the class, you cannot make a student's inability to perform it well a reason for the student to fail the course.
Is it? My understanding is that NAUI allows (and supports) instructors who add to their courses. I'm not sure what the communication is regarding the content/skills would be as I'm not a NAUI instructor, but all the instructors that I know from that agency tailor their classes for the local area. I think that is a good thing. I would guess that instructors say "I'm adding X, Y, Z in this fashion" to NAUI HQ and they sign off on it. Now that this has come up, I'm going to ask some of these guys.
So if an instructor decided to add a free ascent with the regulator out of the mouth from 120 feet and a student held his breath, embolized, and died, you think that NAUI would show up in the court and testify that it was a safe practice? If a NAUI instructor does something terrible in a class that is not a part of the NAUI system, you believe the courts will say that whatever the instructor did is just fine, because it was NAUI?
John,
Did I say anywhere that an instructor can do anything they want? No. The example that you just gave is ridiculous. Let's use common sense here, shall we? I expect better of you.
How about in a deep course, an instructor requires a student to deploy a DSMB on every dive. You can't do that in the PADI system, can you? But I believe that you can within the NAUI system. Perfectly reasonable thing to require in the Puget Sound. Of course the instructor needs to maintain control, be ready to cut the line if say the reel jams or line gets caught on the student.
Or is requiring deploying a DSMB as crazy/negligent/reckless/pick your adjective as free ascent with the regulator out of one's mouth from 120 feet in your opinion?
Yes, I can.
I cannot fail the student if he doesn't do it well. I can, however, keep working with him until he gets it right, which is what we do with the required standards. I have never failed a student for a course for failure to do any skill right. I have instead worked with them until they get it right or until they decide that maybe suba is not for them, which has happened in some case in the OW course.
I see. So NAUI allows instructors to add to their courses and supports them when they do. But they can't do just anything. They can't do ridiculous things.
So what things are ridiculous? What is the dividing line between practices they will support and practices they won't support?
A few years ago, an SSI instructor working for the University of Alabama had students do doff and dons in a 15 foot pool (remove gear at the bottom, swim to the surface, swim back down, and put the gear back on). She did not accompany them as they did it. The only difference between that and what I described is the distance to the surface. When a student embolized and died, it did not go well for that instructor. Would NAUI have supported the instructor in the lawsuit? How different is that from the scenario I described in my "ridiculous" example?
The important question above is this: would NAUI go to court to defend you in a lawsuit if you did something unsafe in your instruction?
I understand that you cannot fail them, but if the student was injured as a result of let's say getting entangled, panicking, and shooting to the surface (possible, though unlikely), I believe the backing you would get in court from your agency would vary based on which one it is.
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