To be willing to give anything to see the Head Master lead by example (making kids swim in the rain)

[fluffyraggies]

That's it in a nutshell really.

It's chucking it down out there. Has been for two hours at least. It's windy enough to be making the trees thrash about. It's cold.

But the HM's policy is for the kids to have their swimming lesson come what may.

I've just seen the latest batch of the poor kids trudging up the hill (part grass, part path) from the open air pool, soaking wet and with their towels clutched round them, shivering.

I know 'worse things happen at sea' - but i'm damn sure it'll be a cold day in hell before the HM comes out of his warm office and shows them how refreshing he finds it to swim in all + any weather

Rant over. AIBU?

YABU swimming in the rain is fun. Being in an outdoor pool in Austria in March and it snowing on you was awesome (pool was heated!)

Cold in towels after is less fun but is it really very far?

the weather ABOVE the water will have no impact on how you feel IN the water - if the temperature is sensibly around the 28 degrees C mark they will have been fine
the poor beggar stood on the side will have got colder

I love swimming in the rain. I wouldn't have a problem with it, as long as there was somewhere under cover to put their towels .

And people wonder why school puts girls of sport for life, for some it will be an adventrue to swim in the rain - but for others it will be a cold damp awful experiance that will put a long lasting dampner on sport and will be a turn off.

There is evidence that school sports has put of girls and this HT will make a last negative impression for a few more.

I don't have any problems with dc swimming in the rain - or adults, if they want to and my dd would be there like a shot

Rezolution Mon 02-Jul-12 13:36:14
"I suppose it doesn't do the kids any real harm, does it? But the question in my mind is: What good does it do? Also do other countries with our climate in Northern Europe do the same?"

In Sweden they're usually a lot tougher about things like expecting children to play out in the rain and snow.

Playschools and day nurseries send the children out whatever the weather.

Where my parents live, the swimming lessons are given in the sea- and no, that's not heated. And it rains as much there as it does here.

My nephew took his swimming certificate in the dark last year: I stood on the beach and waved a torch at him so he could see in what direction to swim (I was also supposed to watch out for jellyfish, but it was bloody dark- I don't know how he expected me to see a thing).

When I was little, we were told not to swim when temperatures were below 13 centigrades, but I've noticed that my brothers are less strict: nephews are now allowed to bathe in the sea on New Year's Day (It's not fayeerrrrr!!!).

My nephews and nieces think British children are wimps.

The good it does do imo is that children get used to the water under real outdoor conditions; they're not going to panic if they fall in the river and find it's cold and nasty.

YANBU. I'm in Wales and it's bloody freezing. I would not be happy with my 5yo DC outside, wet and bare chested in this.

It's primary school, not boot camp.

BTW- I am astonished at the number of primary schools with their own swimming pools! I don't even know of ONE.

cory Thanks for that. Interesting to know how other countries behave.
I often feel we are very insular here in the UK and tend to do things because we have always done them this way. Sometimes I wonder whether we lose touch with the wider picture.

Cory that is interesting. I wonder whether this is one of those things where you are very much conditioned by your cultural baggage and upbringing - I grew up mainly in a country with a much warmer and dryer climate than the UK, and where people tend to stay in when it rains, partly because it does not actually rain that often. So probably I am a bit of a wimp. On the other hand, I don't understand it when people complain of the heat here in the UK because by my standards it is never really hot, just warm!

Maybe slowly slowly I too will come around to the idea of swimming in the rain and cold.

complaining about the weather is a british pass time - we complain when it is hot, we complain when the summer is a wash out with rain, we complain when it snows, we complain when it s cold, we complain when it is dry and grey and we complain all the time about the weather forcast being wrong.

In fact if we didn't have such varied weather - what would we complain about?