Instructors at fault for all the problems of cave diving?

[Cleavitt]

I have noticed a trend in many of the threads I have read recently. The "Does Devil's make people rude" thread being the most recent example. It’s interesting to me that instructors ultimately get blamed for every stupid thing that someone can do while cave diving. I can think of at least a few situations where an instructor is not to blame for a cave diver's mistakes...

1) The diver is a current student in a class attempting to learn to be a good cave diver. Students tend to make mistakes. They might get in the way of exiting divers and the instructor rags them on the surface. They might create some fin marks on the wall or hand prints in the floor (at Peacock during a lights out drill for example). Perhaps they make too many of these mistakes during their course or don’t seem to be progressing and their instructor fails them. However, instructors still get blamed for all of the ‘bad cave divers’ that marked up the walls/floor (of a known training site) or got in the way of another diver.

2) The diver successfully demonstrated the skills required for cave diving and earned their cave diving certification. At some point down the road they spend a few years living up north, dealing with life issues, raising kids, or whatever. Years later the diver decides to make a trip back to cave country for some of that cave diving they have been missing. Unfortunately, now they suck at it and would be unable to pass the same cave diving course they passed 3+ years ago. “Which instructor passed this horrible diver?”

3) The diver is self centered, a know-it-all, and an all around jackass. During their cave training they behave and follow the rules because they know their instructor is watching or their instructor has already ragged on them about screwing up on a previous dive. They exceed all of the requirements and pass the course. However, now they start cave diving on their own and decide that certain rules are lame and don’t apply to them because they are so awesome. They feel that exiting divers get in the way of their own epic dive plan (which is the only dive plan that matters to them). They swear up and down that they didn’t create that hand print in the floor even though everyone saw them do it and they have clay stuck to the wrist of their wet/dry suit. The hand print was clearly already there from some other diver that got trained by a bad instructor.

I’m not saying that all cave divers have been trained well, but I am saying that many crappy cave divers have probably received good training.

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[sea2summit]

Hmmm, I disagree.

This past week at Ginnie for example.

Instructor #1 had 1 student who he seemed to be working between the Key Hole and eye all day every day with senerios going on every time I went past them. Every time the instructor made eye contact maybe a wave and often was in the process of correcting some issue with the student or demonstrating a skill for repetition. Don't know what instructor it was as they where diving the whole time.

Instructor #2 had 3 or 4 students and I never saw them get past the catacomes. This instructor did a line drill where he ran a line accross the exit into the eye, constantly cut people off or just clogged up portions of the cave and all around didn't give a rats about other divers comming and going.

Granted you have great points with the diver that takes a cave break or the diver that disregards the rules after his/her course but I believe they weed themselves out after a bit.

So I'd say there are some crappy instructors out there but I think there are a lot more good ones.

I'm still a novice anyway so YMMV.

[LiteHedded]

4) The student took a class with someone else and the instructor just signed off on the card.

Not sure we can blame the instructor over that one, either.

[ssmdive]

I was a training instructor for a big company for a few years, and have been a skydiving instructor for 12 years, taught martial arts as well.

I have seen ex students do things that they would have never done in front of me. And I realized that no matter how important I make things in class.... that once they are certified they often do things the way they want, not the way they were taught.

The problem often stems from what happens AFTER they become certified. They start to dive with some folks and the "Tribal Knowledge" takes over.

For example: How many of us were taught to always run a line to open water? How many of us run a line to open water at Ginnie? I am pretty sure that each of us at one point were told to ALWAYS run a line.... But we don't always do that do we? The evidence is clear to see every weekend at the Ear. Now how is that a fault of the instructor?

I am not saying that all instructors hold the same set of standards, or even that they all follow the minimum standards.... But I am willing to bet that *most* of the instructors out there observed the students perform to the minimum standard before they passed them.

And lets not forget that things like Intro are exactly that "INTRO" and nothing more than proof that the person demonstrated the MINIMUM skills to pass a BASIC class at the TIME of the class. To expect those students to be perfect is not really reasonable.

[fixxervi6]

I think its rules of %

more cave divers, the higher % of bad apples a-holes etc

[aainslie]

I think its rules of %

more cave divers, the higher % of bad apples a-holes etc

Huh? Care to give me a reference on this "rule"?

Dude, you sound like an old fart here

[murfef]

I have seen ex students do things that they would have never done in front of me. And I realized that no matter how important I make things in class.... that once they are certified they often do things the way they want, not the way they were taught.


I'm not a cave diver (yet!) so I'm not pretending to know anything about it other than after getting my Cavern Cert, I'm hooked. And I'm sure as a new Cavern Diver I will probably tick some people off from time to time. I have no doubt that my instructor is great. That doesn't mean I won't get focused on one thing and maybe not notice something else. That isn't the instructors fault, it's mine. That's where experience comes in. If I ever make any of you mad, I apologize in advance. "Learning in Progress ALWAYS!" However, I do know a little bit about training people.

I agree that people retain what they want. I'm a USMC Drill Instructor and I run into this same topic all of the time. When a new young Marine graduates and goes out into the big bad world and does something stupid, the first thing usually asked is, "Who was your Drill Instructor?". The person asking, for some reason, fully believes that whoever the Drill Instructor was must have been a "turd" since the new Marine is screwed up. This is, more often than not, not the case. I've had friends of mine who are stationed somewhere else call me about some of my recruits. They would tell me things like their new Marine was doing something wrong and when asked about it, the new Marine would state, "I was never taught that". It's obviously an excuse as I know those things were taught. Now in these instances, they were friends of mine so they knew that the young Marine was full of it and that's why they called me. On the flip side, how many of my other former recruits , blamed their screw ups on me, by telling someone I didn't know, that I never told them or taught them that. Since those people don't know me they are likely to believe that its a breakdown in training. "The Drill Instructors these days aren't teaching them $&!+. I guess the Marine Corps is just going down hill!" If you watch the recruits, you see that they act one way in front of their DI and completely different when their DI isn't around. Once someone is taught, its up to them to apply it. You can't just run and blame the instructor all the time.
I'm not saying all Drill Instructors are perfect no more than I'm trying to say the Dive Instructors are. I also hate it when a teenager is all drugged out or whatever, "the parent must not have done their job." I mean, come on people have to learn to take responsibility for their actions and stop making excuses for them. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink.

Again, I'm not pretending to know anything about cave diving and I certainly am not pretending to know anything about the cave diving community and it's structure or people. I just think it is a pretty unfair, universal problem that could be attached to any situation where a trainer and trainee are involved.

[JahJahwarrior]

At the same time, how many instructors are keeping an eye on their students?

I bump into my instructor frequently, and he always asks about my dives. He also keeps an ear open to hear from other people. If word gets around that I'm doing something, like running lines poorly and getting in people's way, he'd ask me about it.

[murfef]

Mine definantly would and I would never want to let her down. I'm not saying some instructors aren't to fault, I just feel that 95% of the time the instructor gets the blame unjustly because it's easy to blame them.

[Richard Atyeo]

Mine slaped my hand during my course so I always try to play nice.I am afraid of what she would do if she heard bad things about me