| ▲ | safety1st 5 days ago |
| I grew up working class and also took swimming lessons at our local city pool. Just wondering, have you actually experienced "the socioeconomic bracket," or did you just take some classes in college about it and/or surf Reddit and get angry about class warfare? |
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| ▲ | bmacho 4 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| It correlates with money, and logic can eliminate a lot of possibilities, like: it isn't money in the bank that makes people to be able to swim; also it is probably not race, ethnicity, religion, or location either. The most likely explanation is that poor people prioritize it lower (or rather: rich people prioritize it much much higher, it is a no-brainer for them). |
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| ▲ | yieldcrv 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| only thing I forgot to do was write “generally” “often” “disproportionately” when talking about an already well understood aspect of the socioeconomic class it doesn't really need to be explained again that some groups have more distractions and barriers than others, mostly by class its great that your parents prioritized your aquatic acumen and has nothing to do with the tax bracket as a whole |
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| ▲ | safety1st a day ago | parent [-] | | No, it's great that they took me to do a cheap recreational activity. This is why I responded to you, you obviously didn't understand the dynamic at work. Us poor people weren't ALWAYS busy starving and surviving. Like other humans, we too had free time. And the local government subsidized both admission and lessons at the public pool. So because of good policy this was a cheap form of both recreation and physical education, as a result lots of us filthy poors in my neighborhood availed ourselves of it. What I object to here is the othering of the working class. They're not creatures that need to be placed behind glass and alternately studied or pandered to. America had the formula figured out a long time ago: invest in public schools, public pools and public libraries that everyone can use, and that serve as community centers for rich and poor alike. When there need to be user fees, sure subsidize those for people in the lowest income brackets, that's a great idea. But the bedrock of a healthy society is good public institutions where everyone's treated pretty equally. We screwed this up when we started privatizing or just straight up shutting down all those things. Then the rich built their own, the rest increasingly went without and some people seem to have forgotten that the other way of doing things even existed. |
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| ▲ | bjoli 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| There are statistics about swimming capabilities and socio economic status. They looks the same in just about every country; kids in poorer families are worse at swimming, even in countries with comprehensive swimming education in school. Better swimming ed in school makes the gap narrower. I don't know any recent statistics, but I have seen statistics from the 90s and back then the US was amazingly apalling in that regard. Edit: this is not comprehensive, but Jesus h Christ in a chicken basket: https://www.poolsafely.gov/2017/07/05/new-reports-fatal-drow... |
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| ▲ | ncruces 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | But that's also, IMO, why talking about it helps. I didn't start this thread to chastise anyone about it, but to express the idea that, in a country poorer than the US (on average), within 30 years, getting kids to swim early probably contributed significantly to close the gap in drowning mortality (and surpass the US). Also none of my kids knew how to swim by the time they were 4 (as in the article) but all of them had had “swimming” lessons, which basically amounted to us spending around an hour in a pool with them. All I can say from subsequent “close calls” is that, in my experience, even just a little familiarity helps a lot. | |
| ▲ | conductr 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | It takes reps/practice so anyone with more access should be better. Wealthier people are taking more trips to beach, may have a lake house, or have a pool at home even if it’s just a condo/apartment. | | |
| ▲ | bjoli 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | This is where I believe in the compensatory nature of the state. Swimming is an important life skill. Someone drowning is expensive for society, and seeing how parents swimming ability is inherited (socially, obviously) you STILL see effects of segregation laws in the US. Pretty crazy. | | | |
| ▲ | firesteelrain 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Beach and water is free fun in Florida. Everyone does it regardless of socioeconomic bracket. I would assume it’s the same everywhere else that has close access to water. |
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| ▲ | decremental 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
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