Why should schools teach their children to swim as slowly as possible?
In short because we believe that the value in swimming is as a survival skill. We teach our children skills which we think they need to have in order that they can cope with:
- being on a capsized or sinking boat
- being carried down river because of a strong river current.
being carried out from shore because of a riptide
If any of these events occur, it is likely that a person (one of our children) will have to learn how to conserve energy so that they can stay afloat as long as possible until help comes, or until they can reach the shore. It's no use how well they can do the 'butterfly stroke' or how fast they can do it if they are kilometres off shore. We have a strong programme that teaches our children to:
- treat water
- duck dive (under potential wreckage)
- swim under water (to swim past an oil slick on the water)
- to not panic if they disorientated underwater
- to swim slowly.
In the end we believe these are more important skills for us to teach our children at school. Some children are naturally good and fast swimmers who want to compete in competitions. We give them all the encouragement we can, but we invite them to join a swimming club. Our time and skills to teach them how to survive in the water is too precious for us to waste.