Three-day vs. Two-day courses.

[PeteG]

For some reason, I have gotten questions lately about why the F.I.R.E. Institute Level I courses are three days long, requiring most people to take a day off work, rather than just a week-end.

It is the judgment of the collective instruction corps that one simply cannot cover the fundamentals of hand gun or rifle in two days with an average group of inexperienced shooters.

Eight hours is all one can really get in a day before people get tired and stop learning. Often not even that much. During that eight hours, Level I instruction is often described as being like trying to take a drink from a fire-hose. Going faster does not leave time for assimilation of information. Nor does it leave time for considered attention to individual problems, or real accountability for every round that goes down range.

Actually, to cover all the commonly employed shooting positions and allow for some repetitions and some simulator time, it takes five days. Five exhausting days. To make the training accessible to working people who have limited vacation time, we cut the courses to three days. To do that, we cut out some of the shooting positions (roll-over prone, supine prone, SBU prone, etc.) and repetitions, and the simulations (except one simulation we do in Basic Carbine).

Week-end courses are definitely easier to market, because they are easier for people to attend. We tried doing a three-day course curriculum over four days split into two week-ends, but there was a lot of extra administrative trouble. (E.g, a fellow takes the first week-end, but gets fouled up and has to miss a day of the second week-end, or vice-versa.) Also, two consecutive week-ends is often harder for people to schedule than three consecutive days. Other schools have reported having the same experience.

We also considered the merits of teaching some of the skills, and excluding others. But the curriculum we use is a system; not having any of it materially weakens the rest.

As the mental and legal aspects of defensive use of firearms has loomed larger in our thinking, the time pressure has increased. We spun off day-long courses on those other topics, but still have to include a couple of hours on those topics or we are not giving people the big picture.

Personally, I believe anything worth accomplishing will take some sacrifice. If, for example, one wishes to learn a useful martial art (whether formal or bastardized), they are going to have to put in a lot of time and work over a period of years, and take some lumps along the way. There are schools that purport to make it easier; no hitting or throwing and regular promotions on a schedule. But I have see the results.

As Clint Smith so succinctly said, "you can't buy competence." It is just not something one can pick off the shelf, or mold to one's preferred schedule. It is what it is.

I wish we could teach a discipline in a day, and not have to burn expensive ammo, but I don't know how to do it.

I am, however, open to suggestions.