Odd thing is, PSIA has never dictated to me what and how to teach. That's generally reserved for individual SSD and TD's. Even then, I look at it as providing additional tools to succeed and make an instructor's day easier with better outcomes for guests. Most Ed Staff training the past couple seasons has revolved around alignment of exam standards, which is fine, as every national organization everywhere has them.
I take it you have some independence. I wonder if most instructors—especially at larger resorts like Vail, where I worked before the bankruptcy—would be free to experiment or teach alternative methodologies like PMTS or to question PSIA training without pushback. Is it not true that practically all resorts closely align with PSIA (and NSAA)?
PSIA has historically purchased its teaching systems directly from Vail, rather than developing them organically. Vail's 1996 10K filing states this explicitly, and it suggests a conflict of interest raising questions about whose priorities PSIA really serves. When I earned my L3 in the mid-1990s, some of the changes forced on candidates—such as the "customer service model" as it was then called—in fact fostered questions that were mostly ignored. We learned what we were told to learn, or we didn't pass.
So I guess it's fair to say that for me, like you, PSIA has never dictated what to teach. It didn't have to.
Among other things, over my lifetime I've worked in education, food, aviation, music and law. None of these endeavors exclude free agency. Quite the contrary: competition is the rule. Furthermore, each has one or more independent organizations that support their respective employees and professionals. They collectively advocate for their members through union representation, advertising, and published materials that are freely available to a wide constituency...and much more. Buyers and sellers alike draw upon the widest possible range of creativity and innovation in the marketplace of ideas, and are correspondingly rewarded.
(Sounds corny I know, but that's what America is all about.)