Training to an objective standard could be a crutch for an instructor who isn't comfortable with that kind of responsibility.
I must disagree. You must have a standard or you don't know where you started from, where you are going or even if you are the right track to get there.
Recognizing what each student needs and is capable of and then helping them get to their potential is what an instructor should be doing.
And how do you assess what the student needs? Pretest? Accepting some kind of documentation from someone certifying a basic level of competency?
I would say there is no way to accept any kind of documentation of anyone's competency at any level. The student may have been the gray man in the course that earned him his credentials, he may not have learned anything and those
credentials might not be worth the paper they are printed.
I'm not sure a pretest is appropriate in a civilian setting, because you can't expect someone to pay for a class and travel to it's location only not to be able to get in because they can't pass the pretest. You have to make a quick assessment of the skills your students bring to class.
I start with some basic exercises. In a carbine/patrol rifle class I can usually tell before we finish zeroing who's going to have problems.
That is a subjective standard of individual improvement.
Without standards how do you tell when they've mastered that particular task to the level they can sustain that skill with practice and it's time to move on to the next task? I say that if you have a set program that moves from one task to another based on time instead of how your students are doing, you are not training as effectively as you can. You can't hold the class up for one person, yet if you've organized your POI so that the skill sets build on each other and you move on to the next task based on time rather then on the students ability to perform the previous task, then every task past that point won't be trained as well as it could be.
You can't prepare the details of that process in a "Step 1, Step 2, Step 3" situation, you have to be willing and ready to accommodate them on the spot.
I maintain that you can't prepare the details of that process without going through a step 1, step 2, step 3 process. You have to know where you are, where you are going and how to get there.
There is a lot in force on force training that seems to be subjective. But if you sit down and break down all the little nitnoid details of what actually goes into a force on force task, be it an individual or collective task, you can come up all of the little steps. Those steps will also help you diagnose problems your students are having. It's a lot easier to "accommodate them on the spot" if you can tell them exactly what they missed. Although in force on force training, it's a better learning experience to have them the students tell you what they are doing wrong through a properly conducted AAR.
Breaking tasks down into subtasks and writing it all out is a lot of work. But you get more training value for your time with that approach then you will with just observing with no reference of what you should be observing for the task to be performed correctly. There are a lot of tasks, especially in force on force training, that are too complicated to keep in your head.
I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree. I say that every task you train on has a standard. The conditions may vary, and that may make the task more difficult, but the standard remains.
Jeff
