black swimmers

I always wondered what it'd be like to have swimming in gym. Do they even do that anymore? Seems like a lot of time, money, and potential issues (ex. Fat kid's parents sueing the school for making him wear a being suit or whatever other nonsense happens these days) As teenagers, we (boys) had swimming as part of gym class in school, a generation ago, but it was a free swim (recreational, completely disorganized and without any instruction or drills, etc.). Fun, but largely a waste of time, and a huge missed opportunity to teach/learn/accomplish something useful and important. Like Karl S., we swam nude during gym class--that was the custom for males then--so swimsuits weren't an issue, but you could be right; in today's litigious culture a local school board might get sued for asking a kid to wear a bathing suit during school hours, not to mention the fact that if little Johnny just doesn't want to do something, well that might constitute another reason to run to court or at least fire the teacher, principal and superintendent. But that nonsense doesn't necessarily turn a good idea (or at least an intriguing idea) into a bad idea. The college I attended required all undergraduate students, male and female, to pass a very basic swim test before they could get a bachelor's degree, but that requirement went the way of the dinosaurs the year I graduated. (I read that the college swim test had been a common requirement at many New England colleges--and maybe elsewhere--throughout the 20th century, inspired by the drowning on the Titanic of a non-swimmer Harvard student (Widener, for whom the library is named), not that being a swimmer would have helped him that much. The issue of whether swimming should be taught somewhere in the educational system is a very good question. Ideally, it ought to be introduced earlier, for example in elementary school, before many kids develop a fear of water and when kids seem to learn easier and retain better what they've learned. I think the biggest challenge would be financial: most public schools do not have pools (as far as I know), and building them would probably be cost-prohibitive. (The only reason we had swimming as part of gym class was because our school was so old it had no gymnasium, so boys had their gym classes at a nearby YMCA that also had a pool.) On the other hand, what is the value of the lives that might be saved, not to mention improved and extended through healthier lifestyles resulting from having learned an activity that one can engage in regardless of age, especially in view of the huge amounts of money that governments waste on so many things?

I always wondered what it'd be like to have swimming in gym. Do they even do that anymore? Seems like a lot of time, money, and potential issues (ex. Fat kid's parents sueing the school for making him wear a being suit or whatever other nonsense happens these days) As teenagers, we (boys) had swimming as part of gym class in school, a generation ago, but it was a free swim (recreational, completely disorganized and without any instruction or drills, etc.). Fun, but largely a waste of time, and a huge missed opportunity to teach/learn/accomplish something useful and important. Like Karl S., we swam nude during gym class--that was the custom for males then--so swimsuits weren't an issue, but you could be right; in today's litigious culture a local school board might get sued for asking a kid to wear a bathing suit during school hours, not to mention the fact that if little Johnny just doesn't want to do something, well that might constitute another reason to run to court or at least fire the teacher, principal and superintendent. But that nonsense doesn't necessarily turn a good idea (or at least an intriguing idea) into a bad idea. The college I attended required all undergraduate students, male and female, to pass a very basic swim test before they could get a bachelor's degree, but that requirement went the way of the dinosaurs the year I graduated. (I read that the college swim test had been a common requirement at many New England colleges--and maybe elsewhere--throughout the 20th century, inspired by the drowning on the Titanic of a non-swimmer Harvard student (Widener, for whom the library is named), not that being a swimmer would have helped him that much. The issue of whether swimming should be taught somewhere in the educational system is a very good question. Ideally, it ought to be introduced earlier, for example in elementary school, before many kids develop a fear of water and when kids seem to learn easier and retain better what they've learned. I think the biggest challenge would be financial: most public schools do not have pools (as far as I know), and building them would probably be cost-prohibitive. (The only reason we had swimming as part of gym class was because our school was so old it had no gymnasium, so boys had their gym classes at a nearby YMCA that also had a pool.) On the other hand, what is the value of the lives that might be saved, not to mention improved and extended through healthier lifestyles resulting from having learned an activity that one can engage in regardless of age, especially in view of the huge amounts of money that governments waste on so many things?