Reply to Mandatory swimming in middle school

Forum Index » Private & Independent Schools

Reply to "Mandatory swimming in middle school "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]A school could mandate a student pass a swim safety test that is administered outside of school or school hours. This could be a graduation requirement or an annual requirement that kids upload to their portals like other health and safety documents. There is zero need to have enforced swimming at school if the sole aim is to make sure all kids are able to swim enough to avoid drowning. [/quote]

And who will pay for the swimming classes? Why not do the same with PE or any other skill for that matter? [/quote]

There’s a medical consensus that’s it’s important for kids to be active and exercise each day (ideally outside). There is no rest that exercise needs to be swimming (which is indoors and at a different location and creates its own set of stresses for kids this age).

As for paying for it, arranging for students to be able to take a one-time swim test with an existing swimming facility (or supervising a one-time swim test yourself with your own existing PE/swim faculty) would be much cheaper than renting a pool from another facility and busing kids to and from there daily (which is what this particular school is currently doing). [/quote]

And how would children pass this test without swimming lessons or at least some experience? Who pays for those lessons/pool access outside of school?[/quote]

This is a very valid point. I guess I’m having trouble imagining that kids who really can’t swim at all will be able to learn in this relatively short exposure given the overall circumstances of what this class is. But maybe I’m wrong. If a kid needed more swim support, maybe the cost could be folded into the existing tuition (given that eliminating swimming in general would save the school money). I might also be wrong in thinking that families with resources so limited that swim lessons would pose a hardship are probably facing other substantial entry-barriers at these exceedingly expensive private schools. I would very much like to think that very limited resource families are at my child’s school. I tried to investigate economic diversity when we were looking at different schools, but it was difficult to find much direct information. I was left with the impression that expensive privates give aid to middle class and sometimes working class families but that families experiencing genuine poverty are underrepresented at these schools. I hope that’s wrong. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics