Mandatory Swimming Classes in School?

At the very least every student in middle school or high school should have a water safety class that covers: a) spinal injuries from diving into shallow or murky water (especially after storms), b)Basic parenting skills around lakes and pool(I know this stuff is obvious and brain-dead for swimmers but you'd be surprised in normal populations), Basic boating safety(mandatory laws concerning pfd's because this is the only place they'll get it and it's very important if you are out of shape and can't swim very far), how to swim in a rip current, WHAT A DROWNING VICTIM REALLY LOOKS LIKE (not at all what you'd expect), what you can do to help a drowning victim without getting yourself in danger, CPR or even a link to the "hands-only" chest compressions, basic safety for home pools when you have little ones around. There's more thaan this but these are the things that come to my mind when I think about what I teach in summer school water safety class. Unless families seek this information out from the YMCA, or Red Cross the school is probably the only place young adults will get it. Learning to swim in PE class is tough since most of our classes have 40+ kids in them and meet on a fairly inconsistant basis.

Although I think swimming is a great sport and think everyone should know how to swim, I don't think it would really make sense to make lessons mandatory. It seems like most drowning happens to young children. I may be wrong, but most elementary schools do not have pools. I've never seen one around here it least. It's not until middle school or even high schools that public schools are equipped. Middle school pools are rare though too. If you're waiting until middle or high school to make swim lessons mandatory, the majority of the years at which children are at the highest risk have already passed. I think the group most at risk for drowning is ages 1-5 and it's usually in pools. The second highest is mid teens to early 20's but in lakes, rivers, ocean, etc. I think that probably has mostly to do with stupidity and risk taking than skill. Blacks and Hispanics also have substantially higher drowning rates. I think it's essential for all kids to take swim lessons at an early age (but not those nut cases that teach 3 month old babies how not to drown). I'd like to think swimming opportunities should be provided as much as possible to students as they grow. If the schools have pools, they should take advantage of them and integrate them into physical education. High school girls wouldn't want to get their hair wet though, so idk how that would work. Very few public schools in CT have pools. They're obviously expensive to build maintain and it's probably cheaper to just rent lanes elsewhere. A lot of schools don't "have time" for PE anymore too. I heard that in the middle school I attended students now must write essays in PE once a week instead of playing sports. What is the world coming to.

Although I think swimming is a great sport and think everyone should know how to swim, I don't think it would really make sense to make lessons mandatory. As a practical matter, I think you are correct. Kids need to be taught when they are young, and swimming pools are largely unknown at elementary schools (let alone the staff needed to teach). And given the state of municipal finances everywhere, there is no practical likelihood that the pools would be built or the staff hired (nor is there the political will to make it happen). I'm hardly an advocate of the "nanny state," but the concept is at least thought-provoking. At the end of the day, parents need to take responsibility to see that their kids learn.

I think it really comes down to the parents to get their kids proficient with swimming. The schools won't pay for it unless they have easy access to a pool. Plus they wouldn't want to cut in to any educational time. I learned to swim at what now is a Y taking swim lessons. Poor, inner city children are the least likely to swim, so they should make sure kids can get lessons. Stew Leonard, owner of Stew Leonard's (organic grocery store chain in CT and NY) is a bajillionaire who lives in CT. It's a small chain but famous in the northeast. People comes from Vermont and New Hampshire to CT just to buy food. Anways, his son drowned as a toddler so he always puts ads on the radio promoting swim safety. They also raise and donate money for "scholarships" for children to attend swim lessons. He went to jail for tax evasion, but he's devoted his life to raise awareness, educate, and prevent drownings. So that's kinda cool. www.stewietheduck.com/home.cfm

Pool availability is definitely the key component here. If pool access is availible then I think swim lessons/classes should be strongly encouraged. Here in SC there are very few pools around. Maybe because we live on the coast and the beach is right here. You would think being in a warm climate ,95 degrees with a heat index of 110 today, there would be pools everywhere. Even with our masters meets we go to the same pools every year. I have a friend that is a principle of a high school 20 min away from here who says some of his students have never even seen the ocean. The culture that some of our children are raised in teaches them that if they go into the water they will die. Maybe that is easier than teaching kids and adults how to swim. What a shame! Everyone should learn how to swim. At the very least be taught not to panic and get themselves out of a situation in the water. Especially if you live near the water.

Pool availability is definitely the key component here. I live in Evanston, IL, which is right on Lake Michigan (Evanston is, not my house - don't I wish!). The accessibility of the lake has always been one of the excuses not to build a public pool. This seems kind of dumb to me on a few counts: The lake is only warm enough to swim in perhaps four months of the year (guessing July to October, often still too cold in June) The beaches are only staffed with lifeguards three months of the year (Memorial Day to Labor Day) The proximity to the sanitary canal in Wilmette means the beaches are frequently closed because of high e coli levels Even when it's open and pollution is low enough, it might be too cold or too rough for novice swimmers - even when it's hot, westerly winds drive upwelling which brings cold water up from the bottom of the lake - brrr! A toddler nearly drowned about a week ago (the kid's fine from what I heard). Apparently, the lifeguards squeezed down on the north/south limits of the swimming area after that incident, so on a brutally hot day later that week everyone was crammed in a small "swimming area" like sardines. Evanston only has private pools (private in the sense that they aren't operated by the city), at Evanston Township High School (mostly closed to non-school activities - though there is a USMS team there), Northwestern University (faculty, staff and students only, unless you are fairly wealthy), the YMCA, the YWCA (very short "open swim" hours) and Evanston Athletic Club (really only caters to adults). The YMCA is really the city's "public pool", but it's not cheap to join, and you can't just drop in a pay a couple bucks to hang out for the day. It strikes me as very short-sighted for a city the size of Evanston (80,000-ish) to not have even one truly public pool where kids can learn to swim or swim in a more controlled environment than Lake Michigan. (This is a city which not that long ago won the Illinois state boys high school championship.) Other Chicago suburbs have outdoor pools with typical "kiddie water park" features. Those might seem frivolous, but I think they attract families to these facilities and make it more likely that kids will learn to swim. Also, Chicago, has a much huge stretch of coastline (20-some-odd miles, much of it with beaches and lifeguards) and has both indoor and outdoor pools dotted all over the city. Of course, it's a much bigger city, but it still seems that Evanston should have at least one public pool, especially considering the fact that Evanston has a sizable African American population and the statistics about African Americans and swimming. Just one data point... Skip

I consider myself lucky that both my junior high and high school had pools. I got in lots of swimming in PE classes! It's interesting how this seems very dependent on location. I grew up in Michigan and high schools have pools as a rule. My school had just a four lane 25 yard pool, but it was a pool. We didn't need to leave the campus for swim practice. Here in Wahsington high school pools are much rarer (at least on the west side of the state). Even Lakeside, the exclusive private school up the road from my house where Bill Gates and Paul Allen graduated, does not have a pool and the campus looks like an Ivy League college in miniature! All the high schools--public and private--have to fight for pool time at off-campus pools.

It seems to me that swimming instruction would be much more important than some of the sports we had to learn back in school (70's), such as gymnastics. Nothing against gymnastics (I love watching it in the Olympics), but a balance beam isn't exactly something kids have easy access to, once they graduate. (That was one of the things I was required in PE to learn how to do...) And, how life-threatening would it be if I had never learned how to do a routine on the uneven parallel bars? This was, largely, my experience as well: elementary gymnastics, trampoline jumping and other stuff we’d never do again, along with endless hours of volleyball. The real sin, though, was that during the years we were in Junior High, boys had gym class at a YMCA down the street. For two hours a day, one day a week, each gym class (group of about 25) had complete use of the Y’s gym and pool, yet the “teacher” opted to use the pool for only an hour every other week or so, and then for an unstructured free swim or for water volleyball (yes, more volleyball). Although I had a sense that most students could swim at least a little, most were not strong swimmers (myself included), so there was a huge lost opportunity here to teach something useful. (I’m assuming a phys. Ed. teacher must be qualified to teach swimming). Our teacher’s “involvement” at the pool was about the same as it was in the gym: sitting on a chair on the pool deck, reading a newspaper, with an occasional glance toward the pool to make sure no one was drowning. Sad, but true.

I don't think that lessons should be required. But i don't think anyone should be allowed to graduate high school without first passing a swimming test.

Our HS has one of the nicest aquatic facilities in the area(central PA) and used to have mandatory 1st&4th&9th grade aquatic instruction.For 10 days kids got bussed to the pool-received 45 minutes of small group instruction and most ended up with decent swimming skills.However,budget cuts have now eliminated the elementary aquatics education,and the instructors have been laid off.That leaves 9th grade-and in the past by that point instruction had shifted to lifesaving skills around water,boating safety and snorkeling.I am not sure what the SD is trying to accomplish here. At least the facility has a comunity aquatics program that offers swim instruction from the littlest kids,swim team,lifeguard training and such.