Teaching swimming at schools

It is reported that the government has decided to make teaching swimming mandatory for all school children. Letters from the authorities will be issued to all schools in the next few days. According to reports, many rivers and canals of Bangladesh will be used by the schools all over the country for the purpose, while in Dhaka and other cities, available ponds and swimming pools will be utilised. There are also many ponds under private ownership and also in public lands in many rural areas. Nothing was said about using these facilities. Maybe, this will decrease the requirement for ponds or pools, mostly in rural areas.

Naturally trained swimming instructors will be needed by almost all schools. This is going to be identified as the main bottleneck to introducing the system which is for the good of the children. Quite a number of other issues that matter should also be resolved. Possibly the schoolchildren themselves will have to bring spare shorts or other swim-wear daily to school along with their books.

All said and done, it will take time and detailed effort and follow-up to organize all the logistics that will vary from school to school. However, the sooner the job is taken up, the better. The authorities deserve congratulations for coming up with this logical and rational idea. It will also lead to regular physical exercise of the school children, which is also important for growing children's health. However implementation seems somewhat dicey, so following up the matter is of much more importance where the services of the school managing committees can be fruitfully utilised.

S. A. Mansoor

Dhaka.

sam@dhakacom.com