<p>A family friend desribed her "swim test" at West Point last year. I'm surprised no one drowned.</p>
<p>There was a report in the news recently about drownings at the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse--about one a year due to drinking and falling in the Mississippi River. People were worried there was a serial killer, but police say it's just drunken stupidity. And possibly not knowing how to swim.</p>
<p>S has to take it tomorrow at Williams. Don't think I'll look up Gerard Perry until this is over.</p>
<p>Swim test is one of the things D lists as a reason she prefers Barnard to Columbia. (LOL)</p>
<p>Actually, I'm disappointed that Barnard doesn't have a swim test... at least then I would recoup my investment on all those years of swimming lessons for my daughter, who insisted on starting with one-on-one lessons at the local pool at age 3, and then made me pay for lessons every summer until she had completed their highest level course. Somewhere along the line, maybe at around age 5, she had to pass a test involving jumping into the water with all her clothes on. Anyway.... other than the West Point test, I don't think the other college tests would have been any problem for her.</p>
<p>Just for fun I went online to the web site for her old swim school to see what she had to do as a little kid to pass the advanced swim class:
[quote]
• Treading Water 10 minutes
• Standing Front Dive & Surface Dives
• Underwater Swim 40 feet (1 lap)
• Introduction to Butterfly w/dolphin kick 2 laps
• Competitive Freestyle 200 feet (5 laps) with flip turns
• Backstroke 200 feet (5 laps)
• Breaststroke 200 feet (5 laps)
• Elementary Backstroke 400 feet (10 laps)
• Sidestroke 400 feet (10 laps)
• Long Distance Freestyle 400 feet (10 laps)
• 10 minute non stop long distance swim using all strokes<a href="No,%20she%20didn't%20have%20to%20do%20that%20all%20at%20one%20time">/quote</a> She was very disappointed when there wasn't another level she could move up to -- her swim teacher suggested that she join the swim team, but she wasn't into the idea of racing.</p>
<p>Actually D can swell quite well, though nothing to compare to calmom's D. Besides the private one-on-one lessons I also paid for (the only way to get my kids past their terror of water) her elementary school has a pool. Because we're a coastal town they wanted all the kids to be able to swim, and they had lessons from first grade on. I don't seem them actually faring too well though if they fell from the pier into LI Sound. In winter the cold alone would get them. Still, that's too gruesome for this thread. The high schoolers grumbled because the swim team had to go to the elementary school to practice. We produced one junior Olympics swimmer who is an Olympics hopeful.</p>
<p>My kids have been in three schools that had required swimming lessons as part of the p.e. program from Kindergarten on up. I think it is a great idea. Kids of college age that can's swim- that is a scary thought.</p>
<p>though nothing to compare to calmom's D. - Well, I'm sure that there are parents of competitive swimmers and summer lifeguards who put my d. to shame. I really didn't want to boast about my daughter, who is a strong and capable swimmer, but really not particularly unusual. I actually wanted to point out that the various college tests as described really aren't all that demanding, though I know it might seem intimidating to a kid who enters college as a non-swimmer.</p>
<p>I agree with NYMomof2 that being able to swim is essential but I don't think colleges need to be the ones requiring it. </p>
<p>I also find it hard to fathom (as does Karen Colleges) anyone who has reached the age of college who cannot swim. Perhaps this should be a requirement in schools PRIOR to college. In my view, I can't imagine a parent not making this a part of child rearing! </p>
<p>My girls did just as calmom's D. They were enrolled in swim lessons from a VERY young age (toddlers, preschool) and went through every single level of the Red Cross swim tests (I did these as a kid as well) until there were no more levels left but Water Safety Instructor or Lifeguard or whatever that was called and they were too young for that. I forget what age they were when they got to the highest level but I will guess age nine or ten? There were life saving skills too. I'd have to look it all back up but like Calmom wrote, even as a pretty young kid, each daughter had to do a LOT more than these college tests, LOL....all the various strokes, dives, underwater skills, long timed treading, and what not. My kids were never on swim teams and didn't do lifeguarding but I never thought they were too unusual (just as Calmom says) in doing all those levels of swim lessons/tests as fairly young children and so the college swim test is very very basic....and sure is mystifying to think of a young adult who can't do such a basic thing.</p>
<p>We live close to two large lakes. Every year there are reports of drownings on the lake. Quite of few have been Hispanic immigrants who go to the lakes for some fun to cool off but have never learned to swim during their childhood in their native country.
Our high schools have a fair sized population of(1st and 2nd generation) immigrant students now too. It's probably a safe bet that these kids have never had the opportunity for swim lessons. So it's not unthinkable (at least in my area) that a teenager could reach college age and be unable to swim. I don't think there are any offerings of free lessons in my immediate area. </p>
<p>My college required the swim test but has since dropped it. H's college required the swim test too. His school (an engineering sch.) was all male until the early 60's. I recently read in his alumni magazine that in the all males days they did the swim test in the buff too! My S now attends same school and laughed his head off at the thought of a bunch of naked guys jumping in the pool together.</p>
<p>PackMom, you make a good point. I'm wondering then, if college is the right time to require this. If many kids have not had the opportunity to learn how to swim, and in fact, many may never even attend college, perhaps this requirement should be part of graduating elementary, or middle, or high school. Also, it is important for safety reasons, to know how to swim prior to age 22. Drownings are as likely at any age if you can't swim.</p>
<p>I agree that swimming is one of those life skills everyone should have. My high school (many moon ago) required it's graduates be able to swim, with swimming lessons for those who couldn't pass the test. Now, in my area, parents start their children in swim lessons well before kindergarten, as the number of pools in the area make it dangerous for children to not know how to swim. I doubt my girls have any classmates that can't swim.</p>
<p>Here the sad drowning stories often are immigrants, with the bittersweet postscript that their children, who did know how to swim, jumped in and tried to save them.</p>
<p>Soozie, "I also find it hard to fathom (as does Karen Colleges) anyone who has reached the age of college who cannot swim. Perhaps this should be a requirement in schools PRIOR to college. In my view, I can't imagine a parent not making this a part of child rearing!"</p>
<p>That was exactly the mistake Amherst made in 1973. The opportunity to learn to swim may not be as readily available to every incoming student. Amherst learned it tragically with Gerald Perry.</p>
<p>PS. Cross posted with Pacmom</p>
<p>padad, President Marx made a speech concerning him last year at commencement, but I can't find it. Do you perhaps have the link?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.amherst.edu/convocation/%5B/url%5D">http://www.amherst.edu/convocation/</a></p>
<p>You can read the transcript or listen to it.</p>
<p>The beginning of Marx's 2006 convocation address:</p>
<p>"A generation ago, a young man came to this great college in pursuit of learning and fellowship. He was African American, he was from New Orleans, his father was a mailman, and his name was Gerald Penny. He took at face value this college’s offer to include him, though the college had not yet adequately focused on the challenges of inclusion. </p>
<p>Americans of African descent had been coming to Amherst a long time, admirably from our first days, when Edward Jones, Class of 1826, was one of the nation’s first African-American college graduates. Charles Hamilton Houston, of the Class of 1915, was the legal architect of U.S. school desegregation, mentor to Thurgood Marshall. Judge William H. Hastie, Class of 1925, was the first African-American federal judge. Dr. Charles Drew, Class of 1926, established the first Red Cross blood bank. </p>
<p>We know that some of these men gained their Amherst education at the price of indignities. There was a time when, if a white and an African-American student wanted to room together, the dean required written permission from the white student’s parents. Showing a bias all too common at the time, the college behaved as if all was well so long as blacks and others from outside the nation’s then dominant culture acted as if they agreed to the protocols of that culture here.</p>
<p>When Gerald Penny, Class of 1977, arrived here, possibly he hadn’t yet learned when to accept and when to object to any such protocols. Or perhaps he was quick to emulate, taking in all too easily that New England stoicism that can hold it a matter of character to keep mute about what might be seen as weaknesses. Having been invited into this college, esteemed for its
teaching, he might reasonably have assumed that such an experienced institution would ask nothing of its students that they could not do. We do not know.</p>
<p>It is evident that, when Penny arrived in the fall of 1973, he did not fully comprehend the challenges of his position here. Nor, apparently, did the college. </p>
<p>And so when, in a letter at the start of that first semester, the college asked each incoming freshman to pass a test at swimming, it did not inquire whether each student had learned this skill. All were simply asked to enter the waters.</p>
<p>Confronted by this apparent rule, Gerald Penny entered the college pool. Perhaps any student in his position would have. But then so few students came from backgrounds that did not include swimming. </p>
<p>We do not know what he thought would save him. Making his way, as all freshmen do, through the intense swirl of people and events in those first days on campus, perhaps Gerald Penny heard this request to swim as just one more strange expectation he must try to fulfill. Perhaps, entering the pool, he believed the intelligence and persistence that had gained him admission to Amherst would also enable him, somehow, to make his way through water where, though he could see bottom, he could not, to his terror, touch it. Perhaps he believed his own courage and strength— which, until that moment, had been his allies—would yet carry him, and continue to save him. </p>
<p>But they could not. After a valiant couple of laps, in the deep end of the college pool on that day, in the presence of comrades who did not comprehend what they were seeing, Gerald Penny drowned.</p>
<p>In the words of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., “There is no future for a people who deny their past.”</p>
<p>Looking back today, I offer to you that, had we tried to be more aware, Gerald Penny might now be alive. I offer to you that this community must continue to confront how Gerald Penny, tragically, was swallowed in the waters of our ignorance. </p>
<p>Because we are an institution dedicated to learning, we do not hide this story from ourselves or from others. We choose, rather, to commemorate it, so that we might ever learn from it. We claim this valiant young man as part of our history. We dare to honor his memory in the Gerald Penny ’77 Black Cultural Center in the Octagon."</p>
<p>I guess I part from the consensus here. Driving is also a life skill. In an emergency, one's own or one's child's life can depend on it, if your driver passes out or for any reason becomes temporarily disabled, & you need to take over the wheel. But I don't think driving should be any more "required" in college than swimming should be.</p>
<p>I think that this is a parental responsibliity to teach a child to swim/provide the lessons. (So obviously, as soozie said, this would imply pre-college, while they're still your dependents.) Some families cannot provide driving lessons, due to lack of time/money for that -- and do not have a second car or can provide a second car for learning/practice/use. But a grown-up "child" should be encouraged to learn eventually on his own, if need be, for the same reason one should learn to swim.</p>
<p>I don't have a problem with colleges strongly encouraging & campaigning for basic swimming proficiency -- even providing some incentive for that, including perhaps some perk/reward for enrolling in swimming or passing a swim test. But D opted out of applying to colleges where that was mandatory. For one thing, she reacts badly to chlorine & always has. She does swim, though. (I forced her to learn. My responsibility. :))</p>
<p>As to general physical conditioning, I am more supportive of that as a requirement, if a private college chooses, as it promotes general health, & also because conditioning the body promotes mental conditioning. I just know that both my d's, after all their intense physical conditioning through their e.c.'s, would prefer once they're in college to choose what to engage in rather than be dictated to as if they're young children.</p>
<p>I agree with you epiphany. I just don't see this really as the college's role to require swimming proficiency. And if we are truly worried about those from backgrounds where parents did not take on this responsibility to make sure their kids knew how to swim, there are LOTS of such people who NEVER go to college and so this isn't going to happen by requiring this IN college. There are a lot of things that children need to be taught and swimming is one of them. I can't see this waiting until age 22 either. There are other things that need to be taught...like you say....driving....or things like health/safety/drugs/alcohol etc. Waiting until college doesn't seem like the right time. I think it is the parents' responsibility but if we really want to ensure that all kids learn these very basic safety skills, then make it a requirement of schooling at a younger age, not college, and in public school where all can attend for free (not everyone goes to college). And like epiphany says, an adult who hasn't learned these things, can be encouraged to do so on their own and doesn't really need the college to take that over. </p>
<p>I wasn't aware that so many colleges had a swim test. It never came up when my kids were applying to college, though they likely would have found it rather odd since they learned to swim as preschoolers. It seems funny to me that colleges take this on when there are a lot of safety issues that are equally as important that are not mandatory classes as well (not saying they should be). I'm wondering how this is the college's mission.....do they also make sure all students have drug testing (also a safety and health concern) or pass any other safety tests? I'm not sure where the line starts and ends on the college level.</p>
<p>Well, I know my son's college makes them take alcohol.edu. It wouldn't bother me a bit if they also required CPR and First Aid. Back in the day I took a swimming test, it didn't seem like that big a deal - and as long as there are life guards doing their job during the test, and ways of being excused when appropriate for health or religious reasons, I don't really see it as a big problem. Colleges can define being educated however they like. I also think reading music (in a very basic way) is part of being educated.</p>
<p>mathmom, you're right....colleges can define being educated any way they like. It is not really a problem! If my kid had to do it, it wouldn't bother me. However, I just can't personally see why this is part of a college requirement. Every school's requirements differ. So, there is no one "right" curriculum or set of requirements. It happens to be one that I find curious but isn't truly a problem. I'm not sure where the line is drawn as far as what is taught at college. Some require a core. Some require alcohol education. Some require a foreign language. Some require physical education. I guess in terms of swimming, it feels more like a safety skill that I would think either falls under a parent's responsibility, or should be "required" much younger than 18-22 years of age and is important enough for all young people, not even just those who go onto higher education.</p>
<p>DS1 is applying to several schools with swim requirements. He does not swim. He is not crazy about the water to begin with (I can relate), but the larger issue is that he doesn't have the body mass to keep himself warm. He heads into hypothermia in a regular pool in shockingly little time. He had a problem while wearing two wet suits and snorkeling in 80 degree water! </p>
<p>He is not freaked about taking a swimming class (he conceded, like getting a driver's license, it is a necessary evil), but if anyone has any suggestions about how to make this a more tolerable (even enjoyable?) experience, I would be glad to hear it (here or by PM).</p>