Thank heavens for PADI
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BartBe
Guest
sheck33 once bubbled...
this is funny, you want to know about backwards kicks, horizontal hover and airshare while hovering ( i am assuming you meant airshare rather than buddy breathing) and then you have PADI certify you
Just what i'm talking about...
If you would have read my post properly you would have seen that I clearly stated that i'm a newbie and that i know not much about it all yet !
It's wise-ass know it all's like yourself that damage a new divers confidence...
You must be a realy injoyable person to dive with... :mean:
ElectricZombie
Contributor
I agree, people are responsible for their own diving skill to an extent.
The problem that this thread addresses is that the agencies are teaching skills incorrectly (or not at all) from the beginning. If a student has only been exposed to poor quality skills, he will think this is the norm and will not see the faults in his diving ability. (You don't know what you don't know.) A beginning student simply does not know any better. They do not know what quality skills are supposed to look like, they have nothing to strive for. The agencies are keeping people ignorant of proper diving technique. (Either because they just don't know or for monitary reasons.) The students in turn do not think they are doing anything wrong and will never improve. It is tough to hold people fully accountable for their diving ability when they have never been taught proper diving skills in the first place. It all boils down to either the agencies or the individual Instructors are not doing their jobs. All the agencies put out bad divers, PADI just happens to be the biggest and worst offender.
sheck33
Contributor
i think there is a difference in being opionated and being a wise-ass. i am very opionated but i have never claimed to know it all, others have. and i guess it is to my own disadvantage that i care, so yes, i try to keep newbies away from PADI and yes i am going to voice that opinion.
as for being enjoyable to dive with, havent had any complaints yet. besides, i dont see how my opinions on the dive industry have anything to do with my 'enjoyability' as a dive partner :mean:
time will tell wont it
norcaldiver
Guest
Exactly. But actually, it's back up the line. It's not my fault or your fault that we dive the way we do-initially. It's the fault of the people I see in every class that are impatient, complainabout not even wearing fins at the 1st pool session, etc. They want to just put on gear and jump into the deep end of the pool, get out and go to the ocean.
I can guarantee you that there will be people in your class that come to class and havn'e read the reqired reading. On tuesday the instructor will say read chapters 2 and 3 and do the knowledge review. We'll go over that stuff on thursday. They'll show up and NOT have it read and NOT have the reviews done. I've seen it a milion times.
These are the people that will give the feedback to PADI, SSI, NAUI, etc and it will be complaints that they didn't need to learn all that and it should be shorter, etc. not "great course, wish it would have been longer or more in depth on THIS subject". So I totally blame all the people that are lazy and want to rush and cut corners for everything I didn't learn in OW.
Actually it is a written requirement that students do a weight check and be properly weighted on every dive. It's also a requirement that student have streamlined equipment but you can go to any quarry on any week end and count many students and even instructors with dangling gauges and alternates.
Tropics Diver
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So who DO you recommend for a new diver that wants to get certified?
sheck33 once bubbled...
right! if it is the instructors teaching all this crap and using stupid shortcuts, by planting students firmly on the bottom for instance, then why is the agency not correcting them
It is ultimately PADI's responsibility. In this regard though I'll say that I don't see a difference from one rec agency and another in they way they do things in the water. They all look the same.
I don't know what the DM on the boat has to do with it but the subject of gas management is unfortunately absent from all PADI classes. They simply say "watch your gauge" Most of us know that doesn't qualify as gas management.
I hate to ask this but does she have a really floaty butt? Some instructors wouldn't know how to keep it down. No doubt, we have had a wide range of body shapes in our students and getting them horizontal has taken some imagination. Of course you know enough to have her keep the air out of her suit and work on correct body position.
argh, why does this upset me i wonder, why do i care
I don't know but I've promissed myself that from now on I'll only care when I'm not cave diving. The divers who have been screwed up the most by our training system are the ones who defend it the hardest. Who are we trying to help anyway?
From now on all my diving will be in caves or on wrecks where the bottom dredgers of the worls can't bother me. I won't have to watch all the classes scurry accross the bottom and I won't be around to have to handle the rescues. When I run accross a student who wants to do it different, I'll teach a class. Other than that who cares!
Maybe the real answer is to change the standards so all these instructors aren't in violation. You know...forbid them to spend more than 5 hours in the pool. We could make skills on the bottom, overweighting and even ankle weights a requirement. It aint gonna change because the people who are effected by it don't care.
I've had dealings with enough people walking in off the street in the las couple years to tell you that most don't deserve our efforts.
sheck33
Contributor
that is not an easy question as not everybody has access to different agencies. for this area i live in i would suggest 5th D, the SSI OW class done the DIR/GUE way.
anything but PADI really, in addition to that after getting certified continue with DIR-F.
For people in europe stick with CMAS
If you really feel that after reading all the posts in this thread that you are no wiser then I don't have any suggestions for you. Between this thread and one or two others that are going on now we have provided all the tricks to getting along in and around the current dive industry. You now know what questions you should be asking a potential instructor and what his/her answer should be. Don't worry about backward kicks or sharing air midwater til you catch up with how to pick an instructor.
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