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Comment by pomian | Hacker News Reader

Dartmouth college (USA), had a requirement that you must pass a swimming test to receive your degree. ( Obviously - if you didn't know how, there were free lessons.) They have recently dropped that requirement! ( After more than 200 years.) Why? At least with the old rules, you always knew that if a person was a Dartmouth grad, you could push them in the water. Or, at least, not worry about boating with them.

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Williams College (US school similar to Dartmouth in culture but smaller) had the same requirement for over 100 years. It was removed in 2022 largely out of concern that it had "disparate impact" on non-white students. Now those students are free to graduate without the embarrassment of being taught how to prevent themselves from drowning: https://williamsrecord.com/461123/news/faculty-votes-to-scra....

These days, you can't really push anyone into the water unless you're ready to pick up the bill for whatever non-waterproof electronics they current have on their person.

It's hard to explain to young people exactly how or why it was, once upon a time, perfectly acceptable to toss people into the nearest body of water with no explanation needed or offered. I think we lost something along the way :D

In (ex) Yugoslavia as kids in kindergarten I attended, we were required to take swimming and skiing lessons and pass test. Later in the primary school same thing with orienteering. It was all masked as fun activities, and truth be told they were, but now I see the bigger picture. I'm still putting my kids through those as well; It's both fun and damn useful.

Most Chinese universities still have this requirement, but my wife was able to pass the test without knowing how to swim (the instructor didn't really pay attention during the test). We fixed that before we went snorkeling on our honeymoon to Bali.

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