\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nInner ring suburb in the late \u201890s, mostly white, no pool in the high school \u2013 though there were two pools in the school district, one in a community center and one in an elementary+middle school.\n\n\n\n\n\u201cDo people who can\u2019t swim actually exist?\u201d
\nMe: \u00a0I can\u2019t swim and most of my family can\u2019t.
\n\u201cWhat about school? \u00a0We had to swim at least a little in order to pass gym class.\u201d
\nMe: ((thinking about my tiny school and my poor school district)) \u00a0What kind of school did you go to where y'all had a pool?
\n\u201cI thought it was pretty common for schools to have pools.\u201d
\n\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2013
\nHow many of y'all had pools in your school? \u00a0I wanna know how common this is, because I didn\u2019t even know this was a thing. \u00a0It\u2019s amazing how large and varied this country is and how different our experiences were growing up.
\nSpeaking as someone who moved around quite a bit throughout my school years:
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When we lived in middle-class, mainly white suburbs, our schools had pools (and sometimes swim teams). When we lived in poorer areas or mainly black/minority suburbs we almost unanimously did not. Even if the school had a swim team, there was either like one school, or like a Community Center facility that everyone went to to practice.afaik, in the twin cities area when i was growing up all schools had you pass a basic swimming cert, just to make sure you wouldn\u2019t be helpless if you fell in water. if your school didn\u2019t have a pool they\u2019d send you to one that did. the year i went to minnetonka we had kids from hopkins bussing in after school to take their swimming unit.
\nthat was in the 80\u2032s though. the right wing\u2019s been systematically chipping away at school funding all this time. i wouldn\u2019t be surprised if schools have stopped doing that. :(
\nTons of pools between private neighborhood pools & public rec centers, where I did K-12 and onwards: I don\u2019t think anyone ever at any time did a single thing to make sure people knew how to swim though. At most there were after-school sports & (later) short electives. I learned because my dad was very \u201cHECK YEAH A SPORT WITHOUT HIGH RISK OF PERMANENT INJURY\u201d (I salute him being ahead of the pack there) but it was utterly an on-our-own-time thing.
\nInterestingly, my mother\u2019s high school put everyone through a swimming unit for phys.ed. with the intention of people learning to swim. I say interestingly because I would not describe the place where she grew up as\u2026 affluent, fancy, whatever. I would instead point out that she lit a fire under her own ass to achieve escape velocity from the region with frightening determination; the grandparental visits of my childhood basically agree this was a fine choice. (Alternatively: \u201cWhy would I bother going to the 30th class reunion? Everyone is dead or in jail.\u201d)\nAt this point I am curious if it was a matter of public welfare/community. Maybe back in the day when people were riding high on building public works it was deemed a good idea to build swimming pools & make sure kids learned how to swim? And then priorities shifted/the money for it dried up so forget it, your parents can teach you on their own time/dime.
\n(Which sucks and I find appalling, but that\u2019s clearly the way the trend points from where I sit.)
\nIn Poland:
\n\u00a0- large village, no swimming pool anywhere, although all the kids went in the river in the summer so we knew how to swim anyway
\n\u00a0- decent-sized town, one swimming pool on the other side of town from the high school.\u00a0 We walked to there for several swimming classes - in the winter, with everyone\u2019s wet hair freezing in the cold air. Surprisingly everyone survived. XD
\nSwimming classes were just for one year until everybody could swim. We took a bus to the next bigger town with a municipal pool. Half of the pool was reserved for lessons/closed off to the general public, during school hours.
\nI went to around twelve schools from kindergarten through high school, none of them dirt poor and some of them even large private schools. Not a single one had a pool. Never even heard of a school having a pool. Also never had swimming lessons in school involving busses to somewhere that did have a pool but like that could have happened at any of the schools I went to in the years I wasn\u2019t there.
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went to a suburban district that ballooned with white flight, the HS built in the 50s didn’t have a pool but the one built in the 1970s and the one from the 2000s did
I think swimming was on the gym curriculum of the schools that had one but not mine
I learned at lessons at the YMCA, that was pretty common (or at the community pools on the other side of town) and then swam in the smaller pool in my townhouse condominium development
also my college required you to either pass a swimming test coming in or take classes to learn and I heard of similar things at many others
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