Drownings
Drownings need not occur, and we all know what the answer is.
As we flop like freshly caught snapper into our deck chairs and crack open our newspaper apps, the summer headlines are dominated by drownings. Too many are throwing off their T shirts never to return. The tragedy is that we all know what the answer is. Schools need to teach kids how to swim.
As a child I was extremely skinny. I was so skinny that my parents worried about me. As it turned out all they needed to do was feed me, but as there had just been a war on, food was considered extravagant. So as I sucked on a raw potato my legs bowed and my chest caved. To make matters worse, I grew up in Masterton which can be very cold, especially the water. The nearest ocean was an hour away so our swimming spots consisted of mountain fed rivers and public pools, all of which were so cold that fish wore puffer jackets.
Therefore when it came to swimming, the thought of throwing my skeletal body into a pool of ice was beyond unpleasant. In fact I would rather have thrown my testicles to a rabid dog, except that of course at the tender age of 8 I didn’t have any. Suffice to say, from primary through to secondary school I looked forward to swimming the same way that a duck looks forward to May.
However, here’s the thing. Despite my antipathy to freezing my nuts off (they did eventually arrive), I learned to swim. In fact, I’m not too bad a swimmer. I was lured into my bronze medallion just as I was lured into my speedos (by girls in swimsuits), but the point is that I can swim well enough to save myself, and probably I could save someone else. All because at school I was taught how to swim.
As we know all too well, schools have now decided that teaching swimming is too hard. Apparently the school pool is too expensive to maintain and parents think that school time should be about maths and computer science. Well, I’m sorry parents and school, but your priorities are clearly misplaced. Take it from me. I have have now been an adult for 40 years and in that whole time I have only had to use maths twice. Once was when I had to tell social welfare how many children I had, and other was suggesting to my wife that 48 pairs of shoes was really 96 shoes and therefore foot amputation would be cheaper.
I’m sure that many of you will agree that looking back, the important things we learnt at school were how to get along with other kids, and how to play games.
As for reading and writing, they are both on the way out. One day we will look back at them the way we now look at catching dinner with pointy sticks.
The irony of the classroom was that we were constantly told to stop talking – yet it’s our verbal skills that keep the world spinning. We can do without pen and paper but we can’t do without our tongues. Schools should get kids to talk as much as possible, and let them play lots a lots of games. On hot days they should be jumping and pushing each other in the school pool laughing and squealing as fat kids become weightless. On cold days they should be chasing each other or skating on thin ice. And as for school pools being too expensive to run, you have to be kidding me. Pools are 90% water!
Life skills such as learning to swim and talking your way out of a traffic ticket are what we should demand from our schools. If a skinny kid from Masterton can learn to swim and hold down a wife, then so can everybody.
Richard Alexander Bain
self confessed lifesaver