You are right for the OW classes, Ian,
and there is another, Problem, which is goal fixation. Guess people go
for vacation into a holiday resort, take the OW class, and expect to get
certified. If their instructor does not,for good reason, and this
repeatedly, he gets a probelem with Padi, who claim his ability to teach
unsufficient. 
Mike Menduno did once a very revealing interview with Mr. Cronin. 

Secondly , after open water, there are hardly any safety related skills
taught with Padi, including the rescue diver.
Most everything is do this do that, have fun experiencing this and that,
get your phony cert cards.

Just an anekdote , silly but happened in my own club, a guy both does
CMAS and Padi Drysuit certifikation at the same time.
( Not with me , fortunately)
So he asked me, where to get ankle weights. I asked him what for, you
have a reasonable trim ?
Said he, for the Padi certifikation, they must do this pivoting, and
when he increases buoyancy by suit inflation, he's lifting uniformly,
not fins staying down....
My comment, when he lifted his feet anyway, he could just kick his
instroketor's ass, was not welcome.

Oh, the Baltic sea will have a this year's hero, I fear....

regards
Matthias

Ian Puleston schrieb:
> 
> But the party line isn't "certify all that pay". The PADI course standards
> clearly state that a student diver must "master" every skill before going on
> to the next. The skills taught, if mastered by the student, should be
> sufficient to bring the student to a level where he/she can safely do easy
> dives and start to gain the experience to move on up.
> 
> The question is can a student master those skills in the time frame of a
> typical course (usually 4 weeks or 2 weekends). My observations have been
> that some can, some can't. If the instructor certifies those that cannot
> then it is he that is at fault. Many instructors push out sub-standard
> divers because doing it properly would mean bringing those students back for
> further training, which would cost them (the instructor) time and money.
> 
> Then you have the question of what level of mastery is required. A student
> who wants to go and dive warm water with a dive guide while on vacation
> probably doesn't need to master the skills so well as one who is going to
> dive unsupervised in a less-ideal environment. That's a judgment call for
> the instructor, and again, a good instructor should be prepared to tell a
> student that they need to come back for further training where he thinks its
> needed.
> 
> We all know that PADI's goal is to make money, and that they want to turn
> out as many divers as possible to make as much money as possible - PADI
> themselves admit to that. If they are at fault here, which they probably
> are, it is in not enforcing the standards that they have published. But it
> is primarily the instructors who are not meeting those standards who are at
> fault.
> 
> A good instructor can turn out good divers using the PADI system. I know
> some very good cold water divers who came through that system.
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Paul Braunbehrens [mailto:Bakalite@ba*.co*]
> > Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2001 5:37 PM
> > To: Todd Sieber; techdiver@aquanaut.com
> > Subject: Re: WARNING - Coffee Alert
> >
> >
> > Todd, as long as the party line is "certify all that pay", the
> > instructor is powerless.  There needs to be some kind of line drawn,
> > and if you can't cross that line you don't get certified.  The
> > agencies have been loosening the requirements, if anything.  It's
> > true that you can have good and bad instructors in any system, but a
> > good system is one that is able to adhere to a minimum standard.  In
> > my experience, PADI's minimum is not acceptable for diving around
> > here (Monterey).  Then again, maybe it's fine for warm water no
> > stress diving, I wouldn't know.
> >
> > Todd Sieber wrote:
> > ~
> > >Paul,
> > >
> > >Look I'm on your side on the issue of some people shouldn't get certified
> > --
> > Paul B.
> > --
> > Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'.
> > Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
> 
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