Most German kids....by the age of twelve will be offered (forced might be a better term) a chance to learn how to swim. Typically, it occurs with the school and is part of their PT plan. Most schools in Germany are are in urbanized areas which have access to an indoor pool. So some instructor will come out for that 90-minute period once a week, and offer training. By the end of the semester, the kid will be a swimmer. The kid is signed off and can swim.
I would take a guess that more than 50-percent of German society can swim. Some might admit....they haven't taken a swim in thirty years but they still have their certificate.
This year....we are experiencing one of the higher rates of drowning of the past decade or two.
Up until last month (August), they were at 425 dead folks in Germany....resulting from drowning. For a country of eighty-one million.....it's a fair number.
Fifty-six of these 425 dead folks....were migrants or immigrants. If you consider that it's only around 1.5 to 2 million that came in....it's a fair-sized number who drowned.
Chief reason? They can't swim. It's been talked about by the experts....the safety folks, and politicians. Added to this list of reasons.....alcohol consumption and swimming in areas which were remarkably unsafe (like rivers for example).
Fixing the rate? You'd have to convince a lot of these folks to take swimming courses, and a large number would have to be guys over the age of eighteen. The sad thing is that you'd have to probably go and recruit male-only instructors (Germans never talk numbers but I think it's pretty split 50-50 on certified instructors).
On the list of 500-odd priorities concerning refugees and immigrants? It won't make the top-hundred but it'll be somewhere on the list to remedy this swimming issue and prevent unnecessary deaths. Naturally, it's not a zero-cost item.
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