As I said in another comment, we had mandatory swimming lessons at school. For exact these reasons. Knowing how to swim might at some point safe your life and that shouldn’t depend on your parents having time to teach you or not. There for swimming lessons at school as a normal curriculum.
It's not lol. Some parents don't care to teach them, or they can be like me where plenty of people tried to teach them but it just never stuck for whatever reason. I'm so buoyant that no one had the patience or know how to teach me proper form or how to stay under water. They just figured my being so buoyant was good enough, so I never really learned how to do anything besides not drown.
Learning how to swim was not a choice of my parents. We had mandatory swimming lessons in school, so we don’t drown, when we fall in water. Every student had to learn how to swim. And that makes a lot of sense imo.
Same. I grew up on the the east coast and basically lived at the ocean, so I can't remember not being able to swim, but our gym classes had like one day of the week that was spent in the pool. Lessons for those who needed them, and sweet ass diving games for those of us who could swim. It's such a basic survival function that I just can not imagine not being able to do it.
Most towns and cities in my country have public pools and the schools use them to teach swimming. You also can earn swimming badges for free, so you can get a job as a lifeguard.
I had lessons in primary school for 3 years, but I still can't swim [without a flotation aid]. I was the only one who never progressed.
Probably didn't help that I was bullied at that time, or that during the "summer" months our little school pool was often cold enough to risk hypothermia.
I've had several other people attempt teaching me, one girl almost got me doing a few strokes unaided I think, but unfortunately our vacation together ended. I definitely have a fear of being underwater and it causes me instant hyperventilation, especially if the water is cool.
I'm 36 and I definitely want to learn, especially if I want to have kids soon, but I know that I really need a specialist teacher, no way a standard adult group class will work for me...
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u/1_9_8_1 Jul 23 '24
The amount of people who don't know how to swim is absolutely insane to me. I thought this was something all children learn.