
How Europe Learnt to Swim - pepys
https://www.historytoday.com/eric-chaline/how-europe-learnt-swim
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Tharkun
In Belgium at least, swimming proficiency is rapidly declining. Can't remember
the numbers, but many children can no longer swim. Some schools have changed
their programmes and have lowered the bar from the traditional 1KM in breast
stroke or front crawl and are now basically teaching kids how not to drown.

The cause, from what I remember, is a serious shortage of public pools. Many
older pools have had to close because they can't meer water quality/hygiene
standards, and hardly any new pools are being built.

The sad result is that kids are now horrible swimmers.

~~~
phobosdeimos
Immigration doesn't help. Swimming isn't really something people do in Iraq or
Afghanistan. And boys and girls can't swim in mixed groups.

Every summer is now filled with news of kids drowning- we are back were we
started a hundred years ago.

~~~
nolok
> Immigration doesn't help. Swimming isn't really something people do in Iraq
> or Afghanistan. And boys and girls can't swim in mixed groups.

? It is completly irrelevant, the proportion it represent is next to none.

For your reference

> The largest group of immigrants and their descendants in Belgium are
> Italians, with more than 450,000 people, which is well over 4% of Belgium's
> total population. The Moroccans are the third-largest group, and the largest
> Muslim ethnic group, numbering 220,000. The rest consists mostly of French-
> speaking people from Brussels, Turks, Kurds, Dutch, French, Portuguese,
> Spaniards, Greeks, Bosniaks, Algerians, Congolese, Vietnamese, Poles,
> Indians, and Guineans (around 23% of Belgium's population is of non-Belgian
> origin).

Moroccan people swim just fine.

I really do wonder how can people have that idea on their mind at all time
even in cases like this where it doesn't even begin to be in scope.

~~~
phobosdeimos
Because swimming is no longer publicly funded and mandatory at schools. Which
leaves it at the discretion of parents. Is it racist to point out that asylum
seekers and migrant children are over represented in drowning? Swimming is
something that needs to be taught.

~~~
nolok
No but it's stupid to claim a nation's overall proficiency at swimming (what
this thread is about) is affected in any meaningful way by migrants that
doesn't even represent a percent of their population.

If you don't think that's what you were saying, I invite you to re-read what
this thread is about, and your comment to it.

The fact that these few people in particular might drown more often
proportionnaly is 1. not what this is about, 2. unsourced, especially since as
the article state culture who don't know how to swim are scared of it and
don't try to do it, unlike culture like ethnic belgian who aren't scared of it
and thus have more chance to drown by effect of not being afraid of going into
the sea despite not knowing how to swim.

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Raed667
I have lived my entire life never more than a 10 minute drive to a beach.

I can barely float. But once you reach a certain age the social stigma of it
will prevent you from even trying, I have been looking to learn but most
places I found are oriented towards very young kids and nothing for the
20-something people that need to catch-up

~~~
mywacaday
I used to teach swimming, I had a class where an 81 year old woman sign up for
the 8 week course, while she didn't have the mobility to do front or breast
stroke she became very comfortable floating on her back and doing very slow
widths of the pool, its never too late. I also have a work colleague in his
late 50's who only learned to swim four years ago and completed an Ironman
last year. I would recommend signing up for course of 1:1 weekly lessons with
a certified coach, and practicing between the lessons, you'll be amazed what
16 hours over 8 weeks would do for you.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Thank you for this. As a 50-something, I've swam my entire life but never
mastered the breast stroke that seems to be required for "serious" swimming.
Instead I backfloat, paddle, and swim underwater. It's always seemed to work
well-enough. I've even got a SCUBA certification. But I always wanted to learn
better technique. I thought that there wasn't a lot of options for older
folks.

~~~
mywacaday
I don't do breaststroke either, find it too hard on my back even though I
regularly do up 3KM open water swims front crawl. Do whats comfortable and
enjoy it

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ggm
A common tragedy in Australia is recent migrants, going to the beach, not
understanding "the rip" and drowning.

These migrants can come from anywhere. Africa, Asia, Europe. The commonality
is that they have at best, 25m or 50m swimming proficiency. They have never
swam in open water, experienced tidal pull, waves, uneven rocky shorelines.

At various times, there have been campaigns to get them trained up. Its a
short, sad life to emigrate, hit the beach and die.

(a second common fatality is rock fishing without an anchor or a life vest but
thats Off Topic)

~~~
pjmlp
Sadly it happens with tourists in the Portuguese coast as well, which never
got to swim with the Atlantic waves or sudden change of underwater currents.

~~~
Kurtz79
As an Italian, having spent all my life up to that point bathing in the tame
and shallow coasts of the Mediterraneum, I remember vividly when pluging the
first time in the Atlantic in Figueira da Foz :)

Even in a tourist beach, the strength and sudden depth of the ocean was so
different from what I was used to.

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INTPenis
Is it really worth while to try and pinpoint a time when swimming was
forgotten?

My reasoning is that in a world where people are born, work and die in one
place there is a smaller chance of them ever needing to swim.

Only coastal people really need to swim and even then, as the article states,
mostly if they harvest aquatic resources.

So in other words. As long as global communications have been lacking humans
have been living very localized lives and not had the need to swim. Why then
try and pinpoint a specific time when we "forgot" to swim? Doesn't make sense
to me.

And yes I know strontium analysis show that humans could migrate a long way
even in ancient times. But they were usually migrating over land. With the
exception of small groups of humans during relatively small windows of time
who aided in colonizing islands like the british isles or south east asian
islands, people who weren't involved in the aquatic industries mostly moved
across land.

I guess the article is trying to say that humans moved away from coastlines as
agriculture became more efficient. And therefore forgot how to live near the
coast.

~~~
wyattpeak
Why is knowing any history important? The Western Empire's collapse in 476 is
considered a major and important event in world history, but it's knowledge is
of conceivable value to any future human endeavour. We value it because we
like knowing where we came from.

To the question of obviousness - lots of things are obvious but wrong. It was
obvious that Earth was at the centre of the universe. It was obvious that
heavier-than-air craft couldn't fly. It was obvious that the aether existed.
Studying obvious things is important.

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nubbins
This may explain why so many otherwise highly developed non western courtries
don’t reach swimming to everyone. England and France were big naval powers of
the time and had much more reason than just watersports to mandate swimming
skills for the populace.

~~~
j9461701
Historically sailors were actually quite bad swimmers. The thinking was that
any man who fell overboard was basically dead anyway, as the ship was unlikely
to be able to turn around and get him before he drifted away (sailing boats
aren't exactly precision vessels). All swimming enabled a man to do was
prolong his suffering, treading water in the middle of the open ocean for a
few days before dying of exposure.

More-over, much of British naval strength was press ganged and an inability to
swim meant once aboard the men were easier for officers to control. They were
stuck there, and couldn't jump ship and swim to shore to escape their bondage.

~~~
toomanybeersies
> Historically sailors were actually quite bad swimmers

It's not just historically. A lot of people who work on the water these days
in developing countries are still terrible swimmers. One of my friends was a
dive instructor in Indonesia for a few months, and apparently the guys
skippering their dive launches couldn't swim. Since it was Indonesia, they
also didn't bother with wearing life jackets.

I don't know how they managed to spend their life living on an island and not
learn how to swim. Apparently Fijians are also terrible swimmers. It just
doesn't make sense to me. Obviously they aren't going to swim between the
islands, but it seems like a fairly essential life skill when boats are your
main method of transport.

~~~
adrianratnapala
Swimming is overwhelmingly (though not entirely) a recreational thing and
mostly found in rich countries. A few professionals in poor countries know how
to swim, dive and do all sorts of things. But everyone else has more important
things to do than to learn how to swim.

And swimming is something you should either learn to do fairly well, or not do
at all. Most poor mothers will let their kids play soccer on a quiet street --
but they will balk at letting 'em swim unless they get real training.

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1_800_UNICORN
Late to this thread, but I loved this article because it put something into
perspective for me... my New England boarding school had a swimming
requirement, and was proud of its longstanding tradition of requiring all
graduates to be able to swim. It makes sense given the context of when it was
started and the extent of people's ability to swim.

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User23
I have a soft spot for the aquatic ape hypothesis, even if it is rather
ludicrous it’s just so entertaining.

~~~
gadders
It's one of those things you _want_ to be true.

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dingoegret
Ancient Greeks were not Europeans. Ancient Greeks were a combination of
Levantine and Anatolian peoples. Modern Turks and Lebanese have more in common
genetically to ancient Greeks than today's Europeans. The romanticizing of
Greeks as European is plain Eurocentric revisionism.

~~~
lvoudour
I'm sorry but this is an absurd comment.

How do you define Europeans? North/western only? The continent's name is
ancient Greek and, while the eastern borders may have changed, there is no
point in time where the greek mainland was not considered part of it even in
ancient times.

And what the hell do genetics have to do with a geographic designation?

