
37 percent of adults cannot swim the length of a 25-yard pool - k-mcgrady
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/28/a-stroke-you-must-have/?smid=tw-nytimes
======
mkempe
With regard to swimming, there are huge differences between ethnic groups in
the US: about 70 percent of African-American children, 60 percent of Latino
children and 40 percent of white children are _non-swimmers_. [1] [2]

A few years ago, my wife worked on an ethnographic research project about the
lack of swimming skills in the African-American population. One thing that was
striking was the difference with other multi-cultural countries --e.g. the UK
and South Africa-- where there are no such differences in the acquisition of
swimming skills between ethnic groups. In the UK, learning to swim is part of
the national curriculum, unlike the US [edit: I don't mean this to be an
exclusive explanation].

On a personal note, the notion that so many US children don't know how to swim
is horrifying. I consider it a basic life skill, as important as knowing how
to cross a road. My daughter learnt to swim before she learnt to ride a bike.

[1] [http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-
canada-11172054](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-11172054)

[2] [http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/10/swimming-and-the-
fe...](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/10/swimming-and-the-fear-factor/)

~~~
aspidistra
> In the UK, learning to swim is part of the national curriculum, unlike the
> US.

More details on exactly what kids in the UK are taught:

 _Swimming and water safety: All schools must provide swimming instruction
either in key stage 1 or key stage 2._

 _In particular, pupils should be taught to:_

 _\- swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance of at
least 25 metres_ _\- use a range of strokes effectively [for example, front
crawl, backstroke and breaststroke]_ _\- perform safe self-rescue in different
water-based situations_

[https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-
curricul...](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-
in-england-physical-education-programmes-of-study/national-curriculum-in-
england-physical-education-programmes-of-study)

Key Stage 1 = Years 1 and 2, so aged 5 to 7 years. Key Stage 2 = Years 3 to 6,
so ages 7 to 11.

From my own experience 25 years ago that last bit, about safe self-rescue,
involved:

* how to enter water safely if you need to (ie. jumping or lowering yourself in, when not to dive etc) * making floats out of clothing (ie. your old pyjama bottoms) * swimming underwater, including through hoops weighed down on the pool floor with bricks (presumably to mimic navigating tight flooded spaces) * treading water (for AGES) * mushroom floating (not sure if there's a technical term for this?) * how to recover somebody from the water

We went once a week to the council pool on the other side of town and pretty
much everyone, all 30 of us, had learned all that by the time we finished and
left for high school aged 11.

~~~
jameshart
And one key phrase in there that emphasizes a difference between the UK and US
is "council pool". My experience in the US - even in Massachusetts where they
actually have functioning local government and aren't too afraid of providing
public services - is that providing a swimming pool is a pretty low priority
for town government. Often a pool will be provided by the local school system,
but access will still be based on a membership fee, which excludes a lot of
people from access.

~~~
jiggy2011
Council pools will still charge membership fees or one off fees for use by
non-members. Though these fees are probably somewhat cheaper than they would
be if privately provided.

~~~
jameshart
One off fees are fine - my experience in the US is that pools that allow any
non-member access are few and far between.

------
etfb
Dateline: nineteen seventy-mumble. School swimming lesson, small town rural
Australia. Me, aged seven, evidently having a mild but irritating panic attack
about having to go into the water. Swimming instructor gets sick of my shit
and throws me in. Oddly, this does not reduce my panic attack! He pulls me
back out again and yells at me for disrupting the class.

... And learns an important lesson: if you're going to lose your cool and
throw a kid in the pool because he's misbehaving, _don 't choose the school
principal's son_.

We got a new swimming instructor... but I never did learn to swim worth a
damn. I make a point of living inland.

~~~
mathieuh
It's good that you got someone fired because of who your parents are, top job.

~~~
chimeracoder
Throwing a seven-year-old kid into the water because they're having a panic
attack is absolutely grounds for firing. It's putting their life in danger.
That instructor had no business teaching children how to swim if he doesn't
understand basic water safety.

It's unfortunate that not everyone may have been able to rectify the situation
the way that etfb could, but it's not like (s)he was abusing that power.

------
skue
So maybe it's a good thing Americans are becoming more buoyant?

I'm joking of course, although the number of unintentional drownings in the US
has been dropping steadily since the 80s, and researchers have not been able
to fully explain the cause...[1]

[1]:
[http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=190416](http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=190416)

------
wallflower
In swimming, elite swimmers are about 300% more efficient. This means that
instead of 97% of their energy going to fight water resistance - 93% of their
energy goes to combat water resistance, leaving 7% for forward motion. The
average swimmer is lucky to get 2% to 3% of their energy to forward motion.

No wonder why most average athletes who do not know how to swim efficiently
are winded. They just literally ran through a 25m wall of water.

To beat the odds, learn to swim like a fish.

[http://totalimmersion.net](http://totalimmersion.net)

------
waterlesscloud
They should have gone to Georgia Tech. At least until sometime around 1990.
Before then, every Tech grad was required to take a course in "survival
swimming". We had to learn to float for something like 45 minutes, swim the
length of the pool underwater, swim with weights attached.

I guess a lot of engineers found themselves shipwrecked or something.

Actually, the concepts were developed by a Techie back in days of yore, as I
recall it. Still, it was a fun class.

EDIT- of course there's wiki entry.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drownproofing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drownproofing)

~~~
fozzieBoston
At MIT they still force every undergrad to either pass a swim test or take a
swimming class. If I recall correctly, the test included both several laps and
10 minutes of treading water (which is harder than it looks).

~~~
vvvnnnnvvv
I believe the treading is only required for the "boating test", if you plan to
sail or row.

------
Strilanc
My father is/was a fisher and I come from a community that has a high
proportion of people who fish generally. You'd be surprised how many fishers
can't swim, despite spending their working lives out on the water.

The justification I heard was usually along the lines of "If you fall out of a
boat in the middle of the sea then you're either wearing a survival suit and
it floats for you... or you're not and you're dead anyways.".

(My father even fell in once, but he was wearing a survival suit.)

------
jrockway
I guess I don't think this is very important. The key is to exercise your
heart, and there are plenty of easier ways to do that.

I think people focus too much on running and swimming. Both are difficult;
running puts a lot of strain on your body as it counters forces several times
its own weight 180 times a second. Good for your bones, if you can handle it.
Swimming is less strain, but the equipment is very, very expensive. If you can
only do it once a week, you're never going to get good enough to enjoy it.

For that reason, I recommend cycling. It's lower impact than running, and less
expensive than swimming. What I like is that you can choose the exact level at
which you want to exert yourself. Want to train at 75% max heart rate? Type in
the number and pedal less hard if you're over, and pedal harder if you're
under. Easy. (Modulo traffic and pedestrians.)

I like running and everything, but I weigh about 15 pounds too much to not
hurt myself every time I go out. So cycling it is.

~~~
jiggy2011
The downside to cycling is definitely safety unless you're using a stationary
bicycle which is boring as hell. It can also get relatively expensive.

~~~
jrockway
Cycling is expensive if you want it to be, but if you're trying to get
exercise, there is no point in optimizing for the weight.

The difference between a 200 pound rider on a 15 pound bike and a 200 pound
rider on a 20 pound bike is a $2000 rounding error.

------
NicoJuicy
Probably some people know how to swim, if you can and want to do something
else. Try out the navy seal stroke -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lUHudMN1TU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lUHudMN1TU)
, i just recently found out about it :-)

------
Intermernet
In Australia (80+% of population living on the coastline) it's common to see
schools providing the "Bronze Medallion"
([http://www.royallifesaving.com.au/training/bronze-
medallion](http://www.royallifesaving.com.au/training/bronze-medallion)) as a
recommended course for students.

I'm not sure how applicable this would be to the USA, but I can't see that it
would hurt (it also provides basic first-aid training and CPR practice which
have saved some lives as an incidental side effect).

~~~
ptr
Same in Sweden, but it's for pupils in secondary school and it also covers
stuff like getting yourself out of ice holes and swimming in cold water with
lots of clothing.

~~~
Intermernet
That would have been very useful the time I almost died falling into a frozen
creek skiing in the Australian Back-Country. For a country that only has a few
square kilometres of skiable terrain in winter, it's got some _really nasty_
terrain!

------
noir_lord
I'm in the UK we where taught to swim at primary school and one of my
secondary schools had a pool and it was part of PE.

Saved my life when I was in my late teens and screwing about on some rowing
boats on a local lake and fell in.

I also pulled a kid out of a local boating lake though that was mostly shallow
enough to wade (which I didn't know till I'd dropped in and might not have
done if I wasn't a reasonable swimmer).

It is definitely a skill that should be taught at school (not to mention it's
fantastic exercise).

------
bithush
As a regular white 30 year old guy from the UK I find it _so_ strange that so
many people don't know how to swim. I know it is a common (American-centric)
stereotype that black persons do not know how to swim and generally hate water
but all of my black friends swim just fine and find the stereotype kind of
strange too. Seriously swimming isn't that hard people and it is a skill that
could very easily safe your life.

------
termarks
I spent six years in the US Navy, and never learned how to swim before or
after I joined.

They give you a basic swim test, administered by Navy SEALs. It involved (at
the time, mid-90s) jumping from a 25ft high diving board into a pool, and
treading water for a bit. This simulated having to dive over the edge of a
ship in case you had to evacuate.

Anyway, I climb up, get to the edge of the diving board and just freeze. A
very unhappy SEAL actually had to climb up and push me off the board. I must
have been a really sad, pathetic case because one of the other SEALs doing the
training pulled me aside and worked with me for the remainder of the day so
that I could pass the swim test later that afternoon.

Kinda makes me wish I had learned when I was a kid, or had the time to learn
now. At least I can still tread water.

------
NDizzle
A lot has to do with the location. They claim a lot of statistics from
Minnesota but maybe they forget that the water is COLDER THAN A WITCH'S TIT
when it's not frozen. It's not exactly the best place to learn to swim.

Also, judging by how my kids handle the water at Santa Cruz, young people are
invulnerable to cold water. That explains why fewer young people drown -
invulnerability.

~~~
adamkittelson
I lived in Minnesota until age 30 and your assertion about water temperature
is flat out wrong. Summers in Minnesota are much hotter than in say, San
Francisco, and the water in the lakes is very comfortable for swimming.

------
userbinator
Just knowing how to _float_ would already prevent many cases or drowning;
never mind being able to move around in the water, being able to not sink into
it is in many cases more than enough. As someone who does know how to swim,
once you figure out the floating part, movement then becomes pretty easy.

------
nawitus
32% in Finland, even though most kids are taught to swim at school. 28% of
school children can't swim. Note that the definition my source uses is that
you need to be able to swim 200 meters to "be able to swim".

