Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Given the newly-added citations, I don't doubt the statistic.

Should swimming be taught in every public school and be mandatory?

Most public schools don't have pools.

My oldest was at Piney Branch ES in MCPS and had swimming every year, I think, as part of PE. However, she was already a strong swimmer by then. I don't think any other MCPS ES has a pool. Jackson Rd ES could walk to the MLK pool easily, but I don't know if they do.

Grew up in Germany where schools didn't have pools either, so we were brought to the local pool by bus. We had swim class in 3rd grade. And before that our parents made sure we took swim classes, which cost money, btw. In DC pools offer swim classes for FREE and they still have to rescue about 2 kids per season. Pulling them out of the pool and then no parents to be found. It boils down to lazy parents/ lack of parenting skills in within certain communities.

Wow.

50YO AA here. Learned to swim because I used to spend summers with my grandparents down South. They owned a farm with a man made swimming pond - it was not a pool - All my cousins who lived there could swim so I learned to keep up with them. Nothing motivates like having to stand on the bank while they are playing all these games in the water. My mother who grew up on that farm could swim. My urban father could not for man of the reason cited above. He grew up in Memphis. Nearest city pool where Blacks could swim was miles away.

Both of my children can swim - both took lessons at Olney Swim Center as kids.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Given the newly-added citations, I don't doubt the statistic.

Should swimming be taught in every public school and be mandatory?

Most public schools don't have pools.

My oldest was at Piney Branch ES in MCPS and had swimming every year, I think, as part of PE. However, she was already a strong swimmer by then. I don't think any other MCPS ES has a pool. Jackson Rd ES could walk to the MLK pool easily, but I don't know if they do.

Grew up in Germany where schools didn't have pools either, so we were brought to the local pool by bus. We had swim class in 3rd grade. And before that our parents made sure we took swim classes, which cost money, btw. In DC pools offer swim classes for FREE and they still have to rescue about 2 kids per season. Pulling them out of the pool and then no parents to be found. It boils down to lazy parents/ lack of parenting skills in within certain communities.

Read "Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America" (J. Wiltse) for context.

Person of mixed AA and SE Asian heritage here... I think only a few family members over the age of 30 can swim. Could definitely count on my hand. I took lessons but did not pass to the next class as a kid.

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious why start a new thread? This is easy to google.

-b/c it involves a separate issue from the morality/decency of what these specific young people did/failed to do to that poor drowning man. And it was distracting from the other thread.

Anonymous wrote:Given the newly-added citations, I don't doubt the statistic.

Should swimming be taught in every public school and be mandatory?

Most public schools don't have pools.

My oldest was at Piney Branch ES in MCPS and had swimming every year, I think, as part of PE. However, she was already a strong swimmer by then. I don't think any other MCPS ES has a pool. Jackson Rd ES could walk to the MLK pool easily, but I don't know if they do.

Given the newly-added citations, I don't doubt the statistic.

Should swimming be taught in every public school and be mandatory?

My partner and I initially opted to teach our children to swim as a safety measure.

I have noticed close to half of the people at swim meets in FFX are POC.

They are prmarily Korean/Chinese, Arab, and Indian, although our area includes many embassy workers. So it might not be typical.

Here's the Washington Post last summer: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/06/10/americas-swimming-pools-have-a-long-sad-racist-history/?utm_term=.3ad27b7180df

"In some cases, white swimmers imposed de facto segregation through violence and intimidation. At Pittsburgh’s Highland Park Pool, for example, white swimmers attacked black swimmers — sometimes with rocks and clubs — to prevent them from entering the pool. Police officers encouraged these attacks and typically arrested the black victims, charging them with “inciting to riot.” In attempting to explain why black swimmers were being attacked at Highland Park Pool but not at other city pools, the Pittsburgh Courier wrote: “The whole trouble seems to be due to the way Highland Park Pool is operated. It is the only city pool where men and women, girls and boys swim together. This brings the sex question into the pool and trouble is bound to arise between the races.”

The same type of trouble had no chance to arise at public swimming pools in the South and Mason-Dixon line cities such as St. Louis and Baltimore, because public officials mandated racial segregation, explicitly barring blacks from entering “whites-only” pools."


As noted in the Root article above, the biggest predictor for whether a child learns to swim is whether their parents could swim. So I fail to see how we can discount racism as contributing to the low levels of ability to swim among African Americans.

70 percent of Black Americans don't know how to swim. (source: http://www.theroot.com/swimming-in-the-black-community-how-racism-is-drowning-1790855966)

Do you doubt the statistic, or do you doubt that a legacy of institutional racism and whites-only pools played a part in creating the statistic?

Learned as a child. It was part of a program I was in (low income, inner city after care).
Few in my family swim. The ones who did were mostly rural. The urban ones had very limited access due to racial segregation and poverty. My dad grew up in a city swimming in a very polluted harbor because the kids retrieved junk there and sold it!
Made sure my kids also learned. My older child was a lifeguard.

Can't explain why but the YMCA has free classes. If you do not teach your kids water safety, you are a bad parent no matter what color you are. Go with them, show them you are serious. If you can't swim, learning with your child is a win win.

And if you can't swim or your kids can't swim, do not go into the water. PERIOD.

I'm curious why start a new thread? This is easy to google.

The thread on teens videoing a drowning man (instead of at least calling 911), brought up an interesting discussion: do POCs learn to swim at the same rate as the general population?

One poster even claimed (without citation) that a majority of AA people (presumably in the U.S.), lack basic swimming ability due largely to legacy segregation of swimming pools.

What are your experiences? If you are a POC, do you and/or your children swim?