>> Nothing is going to get better until we start trying to get out of the hole and improve the average person's ability to swim and make decisions in open water.
Couldn't agree more.
I remember growing up and my parents required myself and my brothers to take swim lessons all the way through junior lifesaving course which was the last course the city offered and you had to pass all the lower classes in order to get into the lifeguard class. These classes were always taught over the Summer and every class had 2-30 kids in it. The lifeguard class was slightly less around 10-15 kids, but still a large class.
I remember wanting to teach my daughter how to swim. The local pool didn't have lessons and neither did the YMCA, so we had to do one of these "mall-type" lessons where some company had a pool in some strip mall and you had one instructor and like 3 kids in the class. In an hour, then had maybe seven or eight reps of learning different techniques. I was just stunned it had changed so drastically. I remember being in the pool for almost two hours every day, every morning for my Summers, getting ten to fifteen minutes on each technique day after day. I remember riding on some rickety old school bus at 7am with a bunch of other kids I didn't know.
I don't know if its because there is no value for cities or the Y to take swimming lessons on any more, or the money and liability is too much. Either way, kids are not prepared to deal with being out in the open water, either in a pool or out in more dangerous areas like the ocean.