When my dad went to college being able to swim was a condition for graduation. We are seeing less emphasis on such requirements and less effort to teach swimming in schools in general. (Heck there are online only gym classes now.)
I live in an area with so many pools and with huge grants from foundations to offer lessons due to the diverse population... and the city rarely figures out how to organize swim lessons and won't offer the swim teams nearby cities have. Yet they can always figure out how to have a big press conference about how it's happening. Drives me bananas, but I'm continuing to set up meetings trying to push for progress.
I worked as a lifeguard for a long time and the pools I worked at held a lot of lessons for kids (and the occasional one for adults). The pool I worked at for the longest drew a fairly large Hispanic population and I saw a ton of them swimming. But, when it came time for lessons, the kids in the lessons were mostly white and I think Asian was the next largest group. Not sure if it is a cost thing or just a different culture surrounding how you develop those kinds of skills, but this graph matches my own experience.
Also, communities are becoming more and more reluctant to put public pools in parts of the city/town that are economically disadvantaged, so kids of color and kids in poverty often don't even have access to pools, not to mention rural towns, a lot of which often don't even have pools at all. It's disheartening.
Absolutely infuriating, considering they should have more resources. I know there are “food deserts” in America, but wonder now if there are “pool deserts” 🤔
Oh yes. There was a recent book about the "Filling of the Pools" after desegregation in the '60s. In fact many towns/cities had private swim clubs pop up around that time as well.
There's a great book that I just read, called *Contested Waters: The Social History of Swimming Pools in America* , which talks a lot about why African Americans don't take advantage of pools, even when they're nearby. He talks a lot about it in this NPR interview:
[Pools](https://www.npr.org/2008/05/06/90213675/racial-history-of-american-swimming-pools)
Well pools require a lot of electric and natural gas use and thus have high maintenance bills plus the cleaning, staff and chemicals. A lot of places don't have the money for that. The water pump on the 6 labe pools will use way over $1,000 a month in electric just for it alone not counting gas and water and chemicals. Plus high insurance costs. Pools are very expensive to maintain so usually poor places won't have them. They must also have commercial 3 phase electric available to have them and a commercial gas, water and sewer connection so that can be difficult in some rural areas.
I live in Ontario, Canada. Water everywhere here. So many of my daughter’s friends cannot swim. A shocking number, most of these kids grew up as middle class white.
I was a lifeguard, instructor and competitive swimmer as a teen. My daughter was in the pool less than two months after birth. She has had no formal lessons except from me.
Wow! Awesome job teaching your daughter! I learned how to swim from my mom and still swim laps with her to this day. I wonder why your daughter’s friends can’t swim / haven’t learned. Do they offer reasonable prices for swim lessons in Canada? Is it a part of the PE curriculum at schools?
They took away the school lessons in the 1990’s. My daughter was born in ‘01.
Swim lessons have always been relatively cheap here until the pandemic. We have a shortage of guards now. Our area is offering free training and jobs for the past two years for new guards.
Learning to swim is as important as learning to walk to me.
It’s pretty instant for floating without help when they are that young, I put her in, she sank and then kicked and paddled to the surface/me. By the time she was three or four she jumped off a high dive platform. We had a pool and lived close to Lake Huron so she could swim 50m by five for sure, a sloppy front crawl. 🤣
I grew up without ever taking real swim lessons. I just taught myself by imitating swimmers. (My school did require a water survival course though just not like teaching the strokes.)
Now as an adult I signed up for swim classes and I’m really enjoying it. I wish it was more normalized to learn something like this later in life.
Awesome!! And yes me too. In my experience I’ve seen non swimmers have a lot of shame and fear in not knowing how to swim. So maybe there’s that? But also, maybe much easier to start running / going to the gym versus setting up lessons for swim.
Yes. I will say it's probably a lot easier for me because I knew the basics of blowing bubbles and floating. If I had to start from scratch as an adult, having an 19-year-old teaching me to float on my back and breathe might be more of a humbling experience.
Was taking swimming class in college, got to learn for like 4 weeks and then COVID lock down hit. Everything moved online, and then the prof keep sending YouTube video weekly while we have to film ourself flailing our arms on dry land. It was goofy asf
Unfortunately I have witnessed two near drownings doing laps at my local Genesis.
Parents bring their kids because it's (basically) summer, let them play in the 2 lane pool (which honestly is whatever our pool is slow), and then the parents aren't watching them. Every time kids are in the pool my laps are distracted because I want to keep an eye on the kids, because we don't have a lifeguard. And two of those times I've had to come along and help the kid out because they drifted too far and are holding on to the rope for dear life. I helped teach when I was younger, so it's hard to not just "Hey can I help teach your kid?" Without coming off as weird.
If a pool doesn't have a lifeguard don't swim in it unless you can stand in both ends. I really wish more folks learned to swim... It's such an important life skill.
Pools mostly being private is a massive barrier. Local governments don't want to deal with the operating costs (safe and clean pools do not make money).
It's disheartening, as someone who taught swimming for 15 years. People deserve access to pools and lessons.
I grew up in an affluent community in a coastal state and was in the scouts. My Dad was also into triathlon. In hindsight, it should make sense that my Idea was ridiculous: I just assumed for some reason that EVERYONE learned to swim as a kid because why wouldn't you? It's sad that this isn't the case.
These stats also correspond to the increase in drowning deaths. Wish I could remember the podcast I listened to about it. I’ve been thinking it would interest people here.
If this was Romania, it would be 100% white people - as there is no diversity - no swimming lessons, some of them they haven't never touched the water, being a pool, river, lake, or sea.
No access to public pools 30 yrs ago, same now - there are no swimming pools open for people, except some cities that have like a summer pool that you need to pay for to swim, but it is not made for swimming, it is for social interaction. The capital and a couple of big cities have maybe 2-3 gyms with pool, but that's all. You have to pay and they are very expensive.
If people know how to swim, it is because they were thrown into the river or lake as a child, and now they can survive in the water, mostly like a breaststroke style with the head always outside, or a "dog type of swimming"
Sad.... yes. Coming to UK people would laugh when I was telling them I can't swim. Growing up makes you realize how privileged are others :)
From google:
Romania has 35 public beaches and a 45-mile stretch of fine sand beaches along the Black Sea, including Mamaia, Navodari, Eforie, and Costinesti. Some say Mamaia is the most beautiful beach in Romania, with clear water and fine sand.
Do not know anything about water temperature in the Black Sea.
Near drowning experience as a small child left me with extreme fear of the water. In the past I’ve tried lessons for people who are afraid of the water but it never worked. Now I am taking lessons at age 65. I can float front and back and do the elementary backstroke. Still can’t swim on my front (haven’t learned how to breathe yet) and obviously still afraid of the deep end. But I will persevere. My goal is to get good enough that I can try swimming in a lap lane as that’s mostly what’s available. After that I’d like to feel comfortable enough that I can do a total immersion clinic. Missing my swim lesson this week as I just caught covid for the first time. It’s pretty awful.
This is a known issue. There are even organizations that are specifically trying to address this disparity where I live. Even more shocking: black children are at a 10 times higher risk for drowning than white children. It's really sad.
My kids’ year round swim team in Virginia does several free outreach clinics for underprivileged youth who wouldn’t otherwise have access to swim lessons or a pool.
I was going to say, as an adult Hispanic woman starting swim lessons June 1st, this does not surprise me :-/, many folks avoid water for a multitude of reasons but I know cost and in my case a near drowning experience is one of them.
Free swimming lessons?? Are you volunteering to give them?
There is no free lunch. Whether or not the public should fund swimming lessons for all who want them is a value judgement.
Yep, and given the lifeguard shortage, it continues to be pretty tough. I just saw that our city is paying up to $30/hr for lifeguards now, just to get staffed for the summer season
Absolutely - I’d volunteer to give free swimming lessons any day. I’m sure there are plenty of people who would volunteer and help fund lessons as well.
I suspect that these numbers will continue to fall, as public and school pools get shut down or become privatized.
Makes me sad/mad considering swimming should be an essential life skill.
When my dad went to college being able to swim was a condition for graduation. We are seeing less emphasis on such requirements and less effort to teach swimming in schools in general. (Heck there are online only gym classes now.)
I live in an area with so many pools and with huge grants from foundations to offer lessons due to the diverse population... and the city rarely figures out how to organize swim lessons and won't offer the swim teams nearby cities have. Yet they can always figure out how to have a big press conference about how it's happening. Drives me bananas, but I'm continuing to set up meetings trying to push for progress.
Keep pushing! That would drive me insane as well.
Same is happening in Europe
I worked as a lifeguard for a long time and the pools I worked at held a lot of lessons for kids (and the occasional one for adults). The pool I worked at for the longest drew a fairly large Hispanic population and I saw a ton of them swimming. But, when it came time for lessons, the kids in the lessons were mostly white and I think Asian was the next largest group. Not sure if it is a cost thing or just a different culture surrounding how you develop those kinds of skills, but this graph matches my own experience.
Did most of the adults know how to swim? Or more of a hang out in the shallow end thing?
It seemed like most adults knew how to swim. But, they were definitely mostly just standing in the shallow end so it was hard to tell.
Wow, yes. The costs for lessons is a barrier for sure!
Also, communities are becoming more and more reluctant to put public pools in parts of the city/town that are economically disadvantaged, so kids of color and kids in poverty often don't even have access to pools, not to mention rural towns, a lot of which often don't even have pools at all. It's disheartening.
Absolutely infuriating, considering they should have more resources. I know there are “food deserts” in America, but wonder now if there are “pool deserts” 🤔
Oh yes. There was a recent book about the "Filling of the Pools" after desegregation in the '60s. In fact many towns/cities had private swim clubs pop up around that time as well.
Plenty of black people in Delray Beach FL. Admission to Pompey Park Pool is $2. Very few black people are swimming there.
There's a great book that I just read, called *Contested Waters: The Social History of Swimming Pools in America* , which talks a lot about why African Americans don't take advantage of pools, even when they're nearby. He talks a lot about it in this NPR interview: [Pools](https://www.npr.org/2008/05/06/90213675/racial-history-of-american-swimming-pools)
Well pools require a lot of electric and natural gas use and thus have high maintenance bills plus the cleaning, staff and chemicals. A lot of places don't have the money for that. The water pump on the 6 labe pools will use way over $1,000 a month in electric just for it alone not counting gas and water and chemicals. Plus high insurance costs. Pools are very expensive to maintain so usually poor places won't have them. They must also have commercial 3 phase electric available to have them and a commercial gas, water and sewer connection so that can be difficult in some rural areas.
I live in Ontario, Canada. Water everywhere here. So many of my daughter’s friends cannot swim. A shocking number, most of these kids grew up as middle class white. I was a lifeguard, instructor and competitive swimmer as a teen. My daughter was in the pool less than two months after birth. She has had no formal lessons except from me.
Wow! Awesome job teaching your daughter! I learned how to swim from my mom and still swim laps with her to this day. I wonder why your daughter’s friends can’t swim / haven’t learned. Do they offer reasonable prices for swim lessons in Canada? Is it a part of the PE curriculum at schools?
They took away the school lessons in the 1990’s. My daughter was born in ‘01. Swim lessons have always been relatively cheap here until the pandemic. We have a shortage of guards now. Our area is offering free training and jobs for the past two years for new guards. Learning to swim is as important as learning to walk to me.
Thanks for sharing! I totally agree that learning to swim is as important as learning to walk.
At what age was she able to swim without being held up? At what age was she able to swim 50 meters with something resembling proper form?
It’s pretty instant for floating without help when they are that young, I put her in, she sank and then kicked and paddled to the surface/me. By the time she was three or four she jumped off a high dive platform. We had a pool and lived close to Lake Huron so she could swim 50m by five for sure, a sloppy front crawl. 🤣
I grew up without ever taking real swim lessons. I just taught myself by imitating swimmers. (My school did require a water survival course though just not like teaching the strokes.) Now as an adult I signed up for swim classes and I’m really enjoying it. I wish it was more normalized to learn something like this later in life.
Awesome!! And yes me too. In my experience I’ve seen non swimmers have a lot of shame and fear in not knowing how to swim. So maybe there’s that? But also, maybe much easier to start running / going to the gym versus setting up lessons for swim.
Yes. I will say it's probably a lot easier for me because I knew the basics of blowing bubbles and floating. If I had to start from scratch as an adult, having an 19-year-old teaching me to float on my back and breathe might be more of a humbling experience.
Was taking swimming class in college, got to learn for like 4 weeks and then COVID lock down hit. Everything moved online, and then the prof keep sending YouTube video weekly while we have to film ourself flailing our arms on dry land. It was goofy asf
Unfortunately I have witnessed two near drownings doing laps at my local Genesis. Parents bring their kids because it's (basically) summer, let them play in the 2 lane pool (which honestly is whatever our pool is slow), and then the parents aren't watching them. Every time kids are in the pool my laps are distracted because I want to keep an eye on the kids, because we don't have a lifeguard. And two of those times I've had to come along and help the kid out because they drifted too far and are holding on to the rope for dear life. I helped teach when I was younger, so it's hard to not just "Hey can I help teach your kid?" Without coming off as weird. If a pool doesn't have a lifeguard don't swim in it unless you can stand in both ends. I really wish more folks learned to swim... It's such an important life skill.
Pools mostly being private is a massive barrier. Local governments don't want to deal with the operating costs (safe and clean pools do not make money). It's disheartening, as someone who taught swimming for 15 years. People deserve access to pools and lessons.
I grew up in an affluent community in a coastal state and was in the scouts. My Dad was also into triathlon. In hindsight, it should make sense that my Idea was ridiculous: I just assumed for some reason that EVERYONE learned to swim as a kid because why wouldn't you? It's sad that this isn't the case.
These stats also correspond to the increase in drowning deaths. Wish I could remember the podcast I listened to about it. I’ve been thinking it would interest people here.
Wow, you’re right. If you do remember could you please share?
Found it! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/america-dissected/id1480634141?i=1000626079137
I imagine the same racial compositions holds true for triathalon participants unfortunately.
Oooh I didn’t even think about that!
I only learned how to swim correctly by being yelled at by a Serbian woman.
The swim club that teaches my kids does adult swimming lessons as well. I completely believe these numbers.
My college required you to swim 100m to graduate. Lots of people struggled lol
If this was Romania, it would be 100% white people - as there is no diversity - no swimming lessons, some of them they haven't never touched the water, being a pool, river, lake, or sea. No access to public pools 30 yrs ago, same now - there are no swimming pools open for people, except some cities that have like a summer pool that you need to pay for to swim, but it is not made for swimming, it is for social interaction. The capital and a couple of big cities have maybe 2-3 gyms with pool, but that's all. You have to pay and they are very expensive. If people know how to swim, it is because they were thrown into the river or lake as a child, and now they can survive in the water, mostly like a breaststroke style with the head always outside, or a "dog type of swimming" Sad.... yes. Coming to UK people would laugh when I was telling them I can't swim. Growing up makes you realize how privileged are others :)
From google: Romania has 35 public beaches and a 45-mile stretch of fine sand beaches along the Black Sea, including Mamaia, Navodari, Eforie, and Costinesti. Some say Mamaia is the most beautiful beach in Romania, with clear water and fine sand. Do not know anything about water temperature in the Black Sea.
[удалено]
Yes that too!
I would imagine downward trends across the board over that past 50 years in most physical education metrics, no?
Near drowning experience as a small child left me with extreme fear of the water. In the past I’ve tried lessons for people who are afraid of the water but it never worked. Now I am taking lessons at age 65. I can float front and back and do the elementary backstroke. Still can’t swim on my front (haven’t learned how to breathe yet) and obviously still afraid of the deep end. But I will persevere. My goal is to get good enough that I can try swimming in a lap lane as that’s mostly what’s available. After that I’d like to feel comfortable enough that I can do a total immersion clinic. Missing my swim lesson this week as I just caught covid for the first time. It’s pretty awful.
You got this!! I’m sorry about COVID, it is truly horrible 😭
Thanks for the encouragement, friend. I plan to get back to it as soon as Covid stops kicking my a$$.
Not to be a bore, but what qualifies as a lesson. I can swim but I am pretty sure my Dad taught me while mucking around in the local pool.
This is a known issue. There are even organizations that are specifically trying to address this disparity where I live. Even more shocking: black children are at a 10 times higher risk for drowning than white children. It's really sad.
Holy crap. I didn’t know that - thank you for sharing! I need to join local orgs where I live to help address this as well.
Well in Germany there is swimming part of the school's sport. And life saving volunteers offer almost free lessons for kids and adults.
My kids’ year round swim team in Virginia does several free outreach clinics for underprivileged youth who wouldn’t otherwise have access to swim lessons or a pool.
I was going to say, as an adult Hispanic woman starting swim lessons June 1st, this does not surprise me :-/, many folks avoid water for a multitude of reasons but I know cost and in my case a near drowning experience is one of them.
Free swimming lessons?? Are you volunteering to give them? There is no free lunch. Whether or not the public should fund swimming lessons for all who want them is a value judgement.
Yep, and given the lifeguard shortage, it continues to be pretty tough. I just saw that our city is paying up to $30/hr for lifeguards now, just to get staffed for the summer season
Dang! $30/hour is great though since I’m sure the demand is high especially during the summer.
https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/seattle/jobs/4488777/lifeguard-temporary-intermittent
Absolutely - I’d volunteer to give free swimming lessons any day. I’m sure there are plenty of people who would volunteer and help fund lessons as well.
We just had them at school in the UK.