Vocational Training in: Turret

The School's continuous training activity since 1959 has always contemplated an extremely important specific instruction, to be performed with well consolidated experience, in a "training turret", a "natural" operative surrounding, therefore of utmost importance for the student's technical training in terms of their gradual psychological, technical and instrumental/operative training/maturation.

Infact, the traditional swimming pool, although equipped with portholes around its structure (today some are built this way), could scarcely serve the training purposes with the necessary teaching methodology, oriented on the psychological and technical maturation (inconceivable the instrumental one, for obvious remarks on weight, encumbrance and hypothetical damages on the bottom of the pool) of the aspirant diver operators, due to the extremely different environments of the technical/preparatory training carried on in the restricted ambient of the swimming pool and practical training in lake.

Whereas, the turret, allowing training and teaching in "controlled" environment - most of all from an accident-prevention point of view amongst the different educational tasks - fills the teaching gap which always existed between the preparatory stage in swimming pool or lake. Gap which could seem very small, but nevertheless results - in years of experience - far too traumatic, risky end extreme for the vocational training in terms of atavistic phobias, stresses, fears and anguishes present in the mind of the human beings, and consequently in the mind of this particular and/or atypical aspirant diving technician; stresses and fears which must be necessarily removed.

The turret, as first psychological impact with a "natural" environment following the preparatory period in the swimming pool, is therefore the gradual and essential passage from a training stage to the much more engaging next, to be performed in lake, reducing to the minimum the establishment of psychological disturbs like the ones already described, and helping at the same time the aspirant diving technicians to overcome the delicate stage of adaptation to the new working ambient, allowing them to face it with rationality and control of their emotional drives, furthermore removing the natural sensation of discomfort and predicament, typical of individuals who must still achieve the needed level of psycho-physical autonomy, to act in an hydrostatic environment with the same adaptation, tranquillity and psycho-physical self-control of a newborn child at the moment of the birth and for several years to come.

Therefore, in addition to the teaching of a correct instrumental use, it deals with the stimulation of self-control and of all the other gifts contained in our sub-conscious, connected to the individual psychological ripeness, just like a child needs education - motherly or not - for the achievement of its utmost complete autonomy and the control of its emotional drives or maturity.

The turret-training stage perfectly achieves the strictly formative purpose of the aspirant technician's character-profile through the passage, again, of environmental kind, without any trauma for the students, who in fact will find in this "balanced" experiential step the rationality of learning, so different from the one achieved in the lukewarm and transparent water of the swimming pool, to be considered only as a PREPARATORY matter.

It is well known that the development of environmental adaptation, so important for the operative rationality of the student, differs from the swimming pool in:

	water and ambient temperature;
	the necessity of individual equipment for thermal protection, which, in the past, has often caused crises of claustrophobia;
	the difficulty of balance-keeping to which the student must adapt himself while diving, due to the hydrostatic asset constantly changing in inversely-proportional form to the operative bathymetry;
	the manual ability needed for the use of security-sling;
	) the correct use ad the getting through of sounding or lead line-links with diving; companion/s (body-line);
	the increasing bathymetry reading and the consequent increase of the water-column above the operator, and so on;

Furthermore, on the bottom of such a turret, thanks to the previous disposition of a working-table, the students will perform operative tasks in team-rotation, following ALWAYS and ABOVE ALL the orthodox application of given accident-prevention procedures, which they know from the School's theoretical lessons.

During their work, the Direction of the Course will give all the technical instructions by radio, and GUARANTEE the prompt intervention of first - aid, in order to protect ALL the diving students.

Underwater, on the bottom of the turret, a technical trainer and/or a teacher of technical and instrumental subjects will give the needed specialized information and/or show the correct use of the instruments, the needed application-methodology, the right position of the hands during the "traverse" and in the operative use as such, all this observing the most important rules of hygiene and security at work. At the same time, the student will be spurred to carry on the operative tasks involving the use of specific tools, together with the uninterrupted control and application of the underwater-breathing technique, previously studied in swimming pool and in the theory-class during the breathing - physiology lessons, which provide, amongst other things, the constant maintenance of ventilation rhythm and volume CONDITIONING the work, and not vice-versa. All this intended to avoid any kind of risk.

Out of the turret, an appropriate radio-equipment will be prepared, connected to special Kirby-Morgan masks and storage of the adequate breathing-gases. Those special masks, called in jargon "masks" or "helmets", are the only protective devices equipped with a two-way radio and are the most reliable ones, allowing communication between the diving student and the Technical Manager on surface and vice-versa for the needed instructions.

Moreover, the instrumental use, adequately troubling the turret's water until it exactly reproduces the working reality, although limited in the bathymetric values, perfectly achieves the training purposes, not much in the bathymetric values (HOW MUCH), but rather in the development of psycho-physical skills and application-techniques (HOW) which will help to "ripen" the aspirant diving technician until the aquatic-space in which he operates - even by total absence of visibility - will result to him just like the normobaric (at normal bathymetry) one.

And finally, the practical training to be performed inside the turret, studied, corrected, renovated and experimented by the School in other 39 years of training activity in the professional diving field, prove that these experiences have not only fulfilled - and still do - the final training purposes in a climate of absolute preventative security, rationality and gradual information, but also develop the psychological forming of the aspirant diving technician between the preparatory period in the swimming pool and the much more demanding practical training in lake.

Those experiences have been and still are perfectly close to the operative reality requested by the firms of the branch and obtain at present the praise of almost all the interested firms contemplating the immediate takeover of the young workers qualified at the School in their personnel.

This is obviously the most gratifying matter for the School itself, in social as well as in moral sense, meaning the complete accomplishment of its statutory finalities since 1959, the year of its formation, which consist in favoring young people in search of a job.