The closure of almost 300 school swimming pools in the past decade has been linked to New Zealand's horror youth drowning rate.
Making a direct link between school pool closures and the increase instances of drowning is something of an over simplification.
As much as it pains me to point out but I agree with Anne Tolley when she was quoted in the article as saying "Teaching water skills is not a job for schools alone, but for families and communities as well."
As you may know I am a great advocate for parental responsibility.
Everyone, it appears, should step up. I liked Len Brown’s idea about free access to pools and the other funded ideas.
If we don’t raise awareness for the need to learn to swim through some graphically questionable TV AD campaign then it appear that nature will seek out the headlines for us with 27 drownings so far this year.
Surely if that is not going to have parents driving their kids to the local pool nothing will.
We can’t merely say that its sad that it happened but it’ll never happen to my kid.
We can’t merely say that those parents failed in their reponsibilty and ‘I’m a better parent than that'.
We can’t merely wring our hands and say that ‘government’ need to DO SOMETHING.
If we each stepped up and watched over our own kids and taught our own kids water-safety; if we each made sure that our own 2,3...6 kids all learnt to swim competently; then there would be zero drownings in New Zealand.
But accidents do happen... but let’s not kid ourselves that they can all be explained away by that simply mantra.
Related links:
- Sinkin 4: Water Safety
- Who would let their kid drown?
- Students taught water safety skills (Taranaki Daily News)
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