Good instruction / Bad instruction

It's easy to take a good teacher for granted, until you meet a bad teaching

I’ve never been one for courses or qualifications. In fact, until recently, I had zero. I remember someone rigging me up from the BBC once, just as I was about to step off the ground onto a big wall to guide their presenter up a multi-day televised climb, to ask what “quals” I had—no doubt to fill in a little box they’d forgotten to fill in a risk assessment form. This kind of request is all too common in the TV world, not because they think they’re necessary to be safe and bring their staff member back alive, but simply to cover their arse. The BBC, like any bureaucratic entity, is one primarily one in which its members are only really concerned with career advancement, hence ass covering. Once, I kept being rung at all times of the day and night by some “researcher” checking I had X and Y for an upcoming program—primarily just busy work that kept her employed in wasting my time (she was being paid to waste my time; I was not). The breaking point came when she asked me if I had any “galoshes,” to which I replied (trying not to lose my cool), “Do you know what galoshes are?”

“No,” she replied.

“Well, neither do I, so no.”

So when you get a call from someone at the BBC, literally with one foot on the wall, asking for your qualifications, it gave me great pleasure to say “None at all” (often, when I was “in TV,” you’d have long meetings—many for programs that never got made—in which all the “stakeholders” were present, in which the whole subtext was to pin any future possible death or injury onto a third party, which means not the BBC (bad for careers), not the production company (bad for future business), but you (your life is a consumable), so being unqualified was some form of insurance).

But in the last two months, I’ve done two courses, signed up by my wife Vanessa without me asking, earning me my one and only qualification. One was a kayaking course, as to join the local kayaking club required a level 2 qualification, and she wanted me to join one rather than going off by myself (Hell is other people, or kayakers). The other was a sailing course, as I have a yacht in my garden, but I’ve never sailed in my life (it was cheap, but it makes it nice to tell the guys down the golf club that I have a yacht—joke).

In both cases, I tried to get out of doing the courses, courses not being my thing. Plus, I’d been kayaking since I was a baby, or at least floating in a kayak (yes, I’d not improved in 54 years, but that’s not the point). I’d been on lots of sea kayaking trips and expeditions, so why should I have to go back and prove myself worthy of being deemed level 2 qualified (there’s only two levels in kayaking, above and below the waterline)?

But of course, I did the course: two nights a week for several weeks. I had to go through the motions of “this is how you get into a kayak, your legs going in the roomy end” and “this is a paddle” and “the zipper on your PDF goes at the front,” etc. It’s probably like joining the army and having someone telling you how to wash your balls; you just nod along (”be the grey man”).

Although I’ve not been instructed much, I have done quite a lot of instruction over the years (“What’s sauce for the goose isn’t always sauce for the gander.”), mainly big wall stuff, as well as guiding people, generally for stuff people won’t/don’t guide and so I do appreciate what it takes to do it.

In this case, the three instructors (12 students, 3 instructors) were fantastic: friendly, quietly competent and experienced, good at coaching, meaning patient communicators, who could align what it was once like to know nothing with how it is now to know a lot, and help others span that gap. They were observant, able to tell who grasped what, and not leaving some behind before moving on. They didn’t go at the speed of someone going through the motions, going at tick box speed, but at the speed of the slowest learner. The training was obviously based on years of individual and club experience, training they’d all done themselves, some not that long before, paying forward the same level of care and attention that they had benefited from. It might seem easy to take a mixed bunch of men and women, old and young, fit and unfit, and bring them up to a level that made them safe kayakers over about ten hours, but it isn’t.

And so my initial foot dragging soon changed, and I began to really look forward to my training twice a week (maybe because I got out of putting the kids to bed?). It was a good laugh, and like anyone going back to the basics, I actually got to do things I’d skipped on my own self-directed journey (a friend of mine once kayaked from Japan to Alaska without being able to roll a kayak, only brace—which he was very good at!—and I think I’d taken the same path). There were no stupid questions, and people felt comfortable making mistakes, getting wet, and trying again. It was the kind of course where the instructors got things going, but soon, everyone was learning from each other.

Often, you can learn more from someone who can’t than someone who can, which I call my “Steven Seagal masterclass theory,” as in, if you want to know how to act, direct, edit, write, then watch a Steven Seagal film.

Then the course was over, and we all walked up into the kayaking club bar (this is Ireland, so they have a bar), and over pizza and beer, we were given our level 2 qualifications. If my mum was still alive, I’d have framed and sent it to her to stick on the wall.

I think we were all a bit sad it was over, like when a school trip comes to an end (maybe the nature of a lot of serial course doers is not about the courses you do, but the fun of doing courses).

This course made me reflect on mine and others’ experience of climbing courses, as well as guiding.

Vanessa had done quite a few over the years, even though she seemed unable to retain any of the knowledge imparted (she’s climbed El Cap 5 times, yet has no recollection of how to aid, haul, clean, having a fast-learn-then-forget kind of brain).

She’s been on good courses and not so good, as well as been guided up Mont Blanc when she first started climbing, but the worst experience she had, which mirrors others I know, was when she paid for a Spanish guide to climb with her up the Naranjo de Bulnes. We were on holiday there, but one of us had to look after the kids, so I said it’d be a shame not to climb it. I was wrong.

The first issue was the guide just told her to meet him at the hut, as he was guiding the mountain back to back, which seemed a bit odd, as he had no idea what her experience level was (guiding if often just about hand holding, and some people need their hands holding to reach a mountain huts). Then as the day got close, Vanessa could see the weather didn’t look good for the day of the climb, and wanted to postpone, but the guide told her it would be fine. Come the day, it wasn’t, after walking in, and paying the guide for that day, but just meeting him at the hut, and buying his dinner. Vanessa, having a lot more experience than the guide realised (I expect he thought she was just some Irish woman punter), thought that the weather should improve around midday the day of the climb, and that if they waited, they could still climb it, as she was a fast climber. But at 9 o’clock, the guide said they should go, and so they did, into the rain and cloud, and started climbing in freezing rain. Vanessa knew it was stupid, and felt the guide was forcing her to be the one to say they should go down, which they did. And so, wet and bedraggled, they passed all the other parties going up as the weather began to improve. The next day was more bad weather, so Vanessa just came home having learned an expensive lesson (it’s a 700 euro win for a guide for a short walk and a few pitches, but not a great long-term strategy, unless you’ve got the type of business strategy that requires a never-ending supply of punters).

I think this experience mirrored the worst kinds of interactions with guides and instructors, not just for climbers, but anyone who pays another person to teach them, or take them somewhere they don’t feel qualified to go themselves. To some—not that many, but some—everyone is a punter and an easy mark. This kind of person is what I’d class as a clock watcher—someone who is OK with providing the minimum, or less—probably because they’re either tired of their chosen trade, or tired of clients (just like how many doctors just get sick of sick people). They’re not only watching the clock for the time you’ve paid them for, but also on this career they’ve chosen, counting down the time until the season ends, or a new job opportunity comes along.

I’ve guided people (not in Europe), and instructed, and I know how hard work it is living up to other peoples expectations, hanging out with people you don’t know, keeping them happy, imparting the Goldilocks amount of knowledge, neither too little or too much, but it is a job you’re being paid to do, so do the best you can. You’re not a God; you’re a service provider in a service industry, and you can never lose sight that this “punter” might have scrimped and saved for years to buy what you’re selling. Although it’s just a job to you—clock-on-clock-off—it’s probably something very spiecal, even meaningful to them.

Many of my guide friends (I still have a few) had great early interactions with guides and instructors, at places of excellence like Plas-y-Brenin or Glenmore Lodge, or on Conville courses, experiences that made them flourish as climbers and mountaineers, and made them want to become guides and instructors later on in life. A bad experience can kill that enthusiasm, be it big wall climbing, photography, or pottery.

So on to the sailing course I did. If I was to rate this course, I’d give it 1 out of 10, that 1 simply for the fact we got to use their boats. It was the kind of course where none of the instructors seemed to want to be there, and it wasn’t that long that not many of the students wanted to be there either.

The first session, 10am till 1pm, ended at 10 metres from the shoreline, when two of us were given a boat to sail that even a small child would have struggled to fit on (not enough boats, so we had to share). My sailing partner looked equally as confused as me as we headed off from Dead Man’s beach (so called, as this is where all the dead bodies wash up, of which there are more than you’d imagine), but perhaps not as well dressed for Atlantic sailing, wearing a Lidl shorty wetsuit (too short, too big, too thin), and a down jacket over the top (too downy). He seemed to have failed to understand the arbitrary instruction of how to sail, and so within ten metres of the beach, the boat capsized (the look on his face, when he knew he was going into the water, was worth the price of the course, I suppose). In we went into the icy sea, which was the point I realised during all the time-wasting information we’d been given, like “what to wear while sailing” (not a bloody down jacket!), no information had been given on “what to do if you fall in.” There was a safety boat, but I think the captain had been a little optimistic about how far we’d get before going in, so he was a way away.

We survived (I managed to stand on the skeg thing, and get the boat up), but my partner lost one of his shoes, and the session was over.

The rest of the sessions were worse than the first, the staff (who were pretty young, but I assume qualified to teach?) Seemed totally uninterested in doing anything but give the impression we were being instructed, like we’d not actually notice. It was all appearance, but without substance, a Potemkin sailing course (as much of life is these days).

The funniest bits were when we traipsed back from the beach to the shed, and to their alarm, they found we still had twenty minutes on the clock, and so each would take turns to obfuscate with a white board, as the other two kept looking at the time on their phones, doing things like drawing a compass on the board and saying “does anyone know what N, E, S and W stands for.”

Most of the time on the water, we were teaching ourselves, the three instructors chatting away on the safety boat, only shouting something when we got too near the rib, like “pull in the sheet” (what the hell is a sheet?).

The last day of the course was last Saturday, and I cycled and hour to it on my bike, glad to see the end of it really, only to find it had been canceled, but no one had bothered to tell the students, the reason being there was a dead body somewhere in the bay (I told you).

It seemed like a fitting end to the course, and maybe I’ll ask for some money back, or write a letter, but if one good thing came out of it, it made me appreciate something I might have otherwise failed to appreciate, which was how great the kayaking instructors had been, but also, a reminder that in the future, it was their standard I should expect, but also to live up to myself, and that maybe, if I send a letter, I should suggest the sailing instructors take a course in kayaking, not to learn to kayak, but learn how to instruct.