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Comment by Tharkun | Hacker News Reader

In Belgium at least, swimming proficiency is rapidly declining. Can't remember the numbers, but many children can no longer swim. Some schools have changed their programmes and have lowered the bar from the traditional 1KM in breast stroke or front crawl and are now basically teaching kids how not to drown.

The cause, from what I remember, is a serious shortage of public pools. Many older pools have had to close because they can't meer water quality/hygiene standards, and hardly any new pools are being built.

The sad result is that kids are now horrible swimmers.

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Same in Austria. Schools have no more access to a pool nearby and just not enough funds to the basic swimming course are a massive problem.

Deaths of swimmers, from children to young people their twenties are in the austrian news weekly if not daily.

On hygiene standards, not much a problem here or in my native Germany, but instead it's a unwillingness by the local administration to fund those public pools. Among the richest countries in the world yet the focus is on some other shit.

> Same in Austria. Schools have no more access to a pool nearby

That sounds like there used to be a time when that was different. In my experience, apart from maybe very few private or sport oriented schools, Austrian schools never had a pool. But in Vienna school groups would go to a public pool, of which there were and are many. Not sure if they stopped that, but if they did, it's not for reasons of access. More likely because doing anything outside school grounds is an "excursion" and organizing it probably comes with more and more bureaucratic nightmares.

Immigration doesn't help. Swimming isn't really something people do in Iraq or Afghanistan. And boys and girls can't swim in mixed groups.

Every summer is now filled with news of kids drowning- we are back were we started a hundred years ago.

> Immigration doesn't help. Swimming isn't really something people do in Iraq or Afghanistan. And boys and girls can't swim in mixed groups.

? It is completly irrelevant, the proportion it represent is next to none.

For your reference

> The largest group of immigrants and their descendants in Belgium are Italians, with more than 450,000 people, which is well over 4% of Belgium's total population. The Moroccans are the third-largest group, and the largest Muslim ethnic group, numbering 220,000. The rest consists mostly of French-speaking people from Brussels, Turks, Kurds, Dutch, French, Portuguese, Spaniards, Greeks, Bosniaks, Algerians, Congolese, Vietnamese, Poles, Indians, and Guineans (around 23% of Belgium's population is of non-Belgian origin).

Moroccan people swim just fine.

I really do wonder how can people have that idea on their mind at all time even in cases like this where it doesn't even begin to be in scope.

Because swimming is no longer publicly funded and mandatory at schools. Which leaves it at the discretion of parents. Is it racist to point out that asylum seekers and migrant children are over represented in drowning? Swimming is something that needs to be taught.

No but it's stupid to claim a nation's overall proficiency at swimming (what this thread is about) is affected in any meaningful way by migrants that doesn't even represent a percent of their population.

If you don't think that's what you were saying, I invite you to re-read what this thread is about, and your comment to it.

The fact that these few people in particular might drown more often proportionnaly is 1. not what this is about, 2. unsourced, especially since as the article state culture who don't know how to swim are scared of it and don't try to do it, unlike culture like ethnic belgian who aren't scared of it and thus have more chance to drown by effect of not being afraid of going into the sea despite not knowing how to swim.

I downvoted you even though I admit, people is the countries you named have less chance to learn swim. But we are talking western Europe and if society (that includes everyone of us) wants to prevent unnecessary deaths in our pools, then WE as a community of humans must act regardless of migration backgrounds.

I've seen people blame immigration for some improbable things, but I think this one takes the cake.

Ah shhh unexpected consequences of hygiene regulations .. quite sad.

It's more about budget cuts. Public pools need to be maintained and modernised in the same way as commercial ones. Here in Germany communities decided to save money by closing or privatizing public pools. When I was a kid there were enough public pools around where schools could offer swimming lessons. Those are now either gone or replaced by much more expensive private ones.

I see. Still very sad.

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