Sam wrote; (SNIP) >Borrowing another cliche....learning when and how to "JUST SAY NO" may be >just as essential a skill as paddling techniques and equipment. > (SNIP) This is the most important skill anyone can develop. Richard raises a good point about outside pressures to do something that you might not normally do. In conjunction with group pressures they form what I call group tyranny. We have all heard the stale jokes about Jewish mothers but guilt is a powerful motivation. Fear is transient, guilt stays with us. It is the fear of guilt that often compels us to act against out personal best interest. How powerful is it? Ben Shalit surveyed soldiers to find out what frightened them in war and it was not the death but of "letting others down" they feared most. It seem to me that this was at work for Diane. She knew better but still tagged along with Trisha. Richard wrote about clubs and their safety focus. Having been one of the early members of the WCA I can still recall the arguments over the "leader"/"organiser" thing while we were trying to define what the WCA should be. In substance I agree with Richard but I would like to offer another possibility and that is that clubs need to define their role better. Instead of being all things to all paddlers they might be better of to narrowly define what they do and will do. In the early days of the WCA many of us rejected the instructional format in favour of learning in the exploratory mode. I still recall one trip organised to learn how to pole a canoe. No one knew how to pole but people went to learn how the "hard way": We started at a low challenge level and worked our way up. We considered the spoon feeding of formal instruction beneath us. One can argue the point over which is best (I feel both methods, learn-by-doing and learn-through-instruction are valid for specific people) but it seems to me that clubs that try to do both get into trouble. The instruction people refuse to acknowledge anything that doesn't grant a certificate and the learn-by-doing people scoff at those who didn't come up through the ranks. I believe that one things we learned by doing it the hard way was to acknowledge and respond appropriately to fear. This, I believe is something the creditocracy method often neglects. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
John Winters wrote: --snip-- > I believe that one things we learned by doing it the hard way was to > acknowledge and respond appropriately to fear. This, I believe is > something > the creditocracy method often neglects. --snip-- About four years back a fellow came to the Sudbury Canoe Club looking for an internship (I can see where this post will be taken already). He needed to complete a practicum as part of his Outdoor Adventure Leadership degree. He said that he was certified by the Ontario Wild Water Affiliation (OWWA) as an instructor. To check him out, we brought him along with a novice trip on the Ottawa. To make a long story short, he swam eighteen times on the first day, and wisely chose not to paddle the second day. All the novices together over the weekend only swam under half a dozen times. For the drive home he was sharing a ride with one of the club's senior instructors. The last I saw of him before the drive, he was telling the instructor (a petite woman) how to tie on the boats. That evening I received a call from the instructor complaining that this fellow had been a back-seat driver for the entire five hour trip home. I had a chat with the fellow later in the week, and learned that this was his first time on wild water! It turns out that the OWWA had instituted a new series of hero-badges, including one which certifies folks to instruct in a pool. Needless to say, everyone at the club (except for the instructor who had to put up with him on the drive) had a good laugh over this, but we were also concerned that here was a fellow who was running about collecting hero-badges as part of his degree, and who hoped to gain professional employment based upon these qualifications, but who had never bothered to put in a few years "learning the hard way". Big mistake on his part, and a bigger mistake for anyone who trusts in hero-badges when hiring. Richard Culpeper www.geocities.com/~culpeper *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
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