I have a question for you divers and instructors that have been around since before the training got watered down.
Anybody that was not around and doesn't know the facts, please refrain from throwing in your 2 cents. I want to know from people that were actually there and saw this first hand.
I was there for the second half, I know the stories from the first half.
I constantly hear about how the training used to be back in the day. I want to know once and for all just for my own education when (what year/time frame) this breakdown in training occured and who was responsible for it.
Was this an incremental slow softening or was it a one time radical reorganization of standards?
In the late 1950s and early 1960s the recreational diving community, took the knowledge base and skills that were being used by the research diving community in its 100 hr program for entry level divers and started using that to qualify recreational instructors. In the same time frame the 40 hour program (no hours for open water dives) was becoming standard both for shop cards (shops issued their own) as well as for the programs of the newly created agencies. In large part this was an outgrowth of the National Diving Patrol column that grew into NAUI in Skin Diver Magazine. Standard texts then were Science of Skin and Scuba (then New Science ...) and the U.S. Navy Diving Manual.
The first change was to add required open water dives, and they became part of the 40 hour requirement. In the late 1960s through the mid 1970s NAUI was the dominant agency with a very rigorous ITC that still closely resembled the Scripps Model 100 hour course with teaching theory and course conduct topics added in. PADI grew their instructor base by issuing cards, first for $10.00 and later $25.00 to anyone who could make the claim that they were already teaching diving ... all it took was a personal letter stating that you have taught diving in the military, at a shop, at a school, just about anything. Well ... though the late 1970s the number of training fatalities soared, PADI's response to this was to do something unheard of, create two levels of instructor (back then, hard as it may be to believe, there were two certifications, Basic Diver and Instructor ... that was it). So PADI created the Open Water Instructor, thus demoting all of their previous clients to confined water only instructors. It took a few years, but this did bring the training fatalities down from (If memory serves) sixty odd to the more typical twenty odd.
Things settled down, DEMA was formed, and in the early to mid 1980s DEMA asked each agency to identify a few instructors who were to experiment with a new format, an 18 hour, 4 dive course that was supposed to breathe new life into the moribund diving industry. I was one of the instructors asked to try the course out. I ran two sessions, I found it to be woefully inadequate for training divers for temperate diving, and that was what I report back, in person, to DEMA at a meeting at one of those La Hacienda hotels near Los Angeles. It seemed to be a dead issue, but in retrospect it is clear that PADI had decided, in advance of doing the research, that they were going to embrace the reduced program and with DEMA's help, shove it down the the throat of an unsuspecting public. The result is a classic study in the effective marketing of an inferior product to an unsophisticated public.
Here's what I know so far:
I spoke to an older instructor who told me bits and pieces of how and when this happened but he is never really clear on facts. Somewhere around the late 70's or early 80's the training broke down to allow the industry to become more family friendly and all inclusive. That was about the time of the first DEMA show and the time frame when PADI was formed, which was the main agency that was responsible for the "new standard". A bunch of shops and instructors (?) got together and agreed that training was too hard and too many people were being denied certifications. The sport was going nowhere and something had to be done. Compound that with many tropical vacation spots opening up and the need to get people underwater within a few days so they could enjoy the pretty fish and voila! you have the 3 day course.
Is this fairly accurate?
Maybe someone with experience can fill in the details.
Thank you.
It wasn't a few shops and instructors, it was US Divers and PADI that made it happen.
