Good swimming lessons include water safety and teach people respect for those situations. Non swimmers have the worst of all worlds, they can't swim and often don't realize how dangerous it is.
I have to wonder too if among teens and to some extent pre-teens, there's a kind of machismo about listening to an instructor. In the film "Pride," when the actor playing Ellis gave one kid some tips about his technique, the kid at first sneered... until Ellis beat him in a race.
Just a thought. Even when I was a kid, among my peers (fortunately, my parents and many others insisted on our taking lessons), there was a kind of competition about who would go in deepest or jump into the biggest waves. I never was all that much interested in that kind of jockeying for position... mainly because at the time, yes, I was a water wimp and took my time to get used to swimming and going into deep water. But I took some verbal abuse because of that. But at least my peers and I had lessons and our parents set limits--no swimming without a lifeguard present or outside a marked swimming area--and there were consequences if we didn't follow those rules.
Without that kind of structure and with the feeling, "I don't need lessons. I'm too cool for that," there are drownings waiting to happen.
A deadly belief. One quote I read--forget which article, "you won't die not knowing how to play basketball."
Good swimming lessons include water safety and teach people respect for those situations. Non swimmers have the worst of all worlds, they can't swim and often don't realize how dangerous it is.
I have to wonder too if among teens and to some extent pre-teens, there's a kind of machismo about listening to an instructor. In the film "Pride," when the actor playing Ellis gave one kid some tips about his technique, the kid at first sneered... until Ellis beat him in a race.
Just a thought. Even when I was a kid, among my peers (fortunately, my parents and many others insisted on our taking lessons), there was a kind of competition about who would go in deepest or jump into the biggest waves. I never was all that much interested in that kind of jockeying for position... mainly because at the time, yes, I was a water wimp and took my time to get used to swimming and going into deep water. But I took some verbal abuse because of that. But at least my peers and I had lessons and our parents set limits--no swimming without a lifeguard present or outside a marked swimming area--and there were consequences if we didn't follow those rules.
Without that kind of structure and with the feeling, "I don't need lessons. I'm too cool for that," there are drownings waiting to happen.
A deadly belief. One quote I read--forget which article, "you won't die not knowing how to play basketball."
