Many years ago when I was a teenager I worked as a swimming instructor. In my experience, most black kids were terrified of the water and getting them over that fear was vital for teaching them to swim. Some white kids were similarly terrified, but not as many. It was something like 8 in 10 vs 2 in 10. I don't have an explaination for it.
I can swim (to the nearest shore), but “getting over that fear” sounds absurd to me. You’re one breath, one cramp, one fishing net away from slow spasmatic death and you should ignore that for some reason. Yeah, sure. The explanation is easy, you stop moving correctly, you die. That is stressful. Swimming is free soloing in water, a somehow normalized dangerous activity. My words would sound funny if most of us didn’t know someone who drowned or almost drowned.
There's rational fear, which is more a sort of respect I think, which seems to be what you're talking about. But with young kids there is often a sort of phobia sort of fear where they refuse to get into the water, refuse to dunk their head under the water, or refuse to let go of the side of the pool even when somebody is holding them. We spent a lot of time trying to coax kids through this sort of fear.
If their fear kept them away from water forever, it would serve them well enough I guess... the problem is, if you don't get kids swimming young then when they get older they will probably push through the fear on their own to fit in during social situation rather than in an instructional context where somebody is prepared to help them through the learning process safely. That's how you get teenagers jumping into pools during pool parties and immediately starting to drown.
"...most black kids were terrified of the water..."
At what age did the training start? I reckon training must have started far too late (read my comment about me getting used to the water about the same time I learned to walk).
There were different age groups, the youngest were infants with their parents but the classes I was involved with started at ages 4-5 iirc. These were all an out of school program, I wasn't involved with the swimming lessons given to everybody during school (same pool and head instructor though) but those started at first grade. The kids I taught were all signed up by their parents at whatever age the parents signed them up at.
Hum, 4-5 you'd think would be young enough. So I wonder what could cause such a cultural shift. I'd be interested to know whether the parents of those scared kids could swim (if they couldn't then that could be the problem).
I've not thought about it before because over here one just assumes someone can swim (with the caveat/possible exception of some tourists and migrants).
You'd think the first step in solving the problem would be to figure out why kids here take easily to water and the ones your way less so. Perhaps the answer is known and I've just not heard about it.
