Wales: “School bans ‘dangerous’ swimming goggles”

“A school has banned children from wearing goggles during swimming lessons for fear they could hurt themselves.” [Telegraph (U.K.) via Cathy Gellis, who writes, “As a swimming teacher — in fact, one who doesn’t actually like her students to use goggles — I feel competent, and confident, in saying this school is insane.”]

3 Comments

  • It’d be one thing to leave the goggles at home voluntarily if the swimming pools weren’t so full of chlorine these days. I bet there is 2 or 3 times as much put in as was when I was a child. I remember being able to swim underwater (3 lengths before coming up, I might add) and not hurt any from the chlorine until say a few hours. Now, it stings like heck from the get-go (I can’t stay underwater for as long either, which is additionally p__sing me off ;-}

    I can see a “concussion from bumping hard into the swimming pool wall due to no vision due to high chlorine levels and lack of goggles” lawsuit on the way. Oh, well, as long as there’s money to be made by lawyers, who cares if the kids’ eyes sting like a S.O.B.

  • the problem with children today is we leave them in the care the insane people with no common sense to teach them then we wonder why they do not learn anything

    can someone explain this to me? please

  • Dave, all that “p__sing” is why they have to put so much chlorine in the water.

    matt, according to the article the “children” were at risk for eye injury for putting on and taking off the goggles, ie, pulling them out too far and letting them snap into place instead of sliding them over their pointy little foreheads.

    Over a decade of competitive swimming, lifeguarding, teaching swimming and pool manager, way too many hours spent at the back door of a major city hospital and for the love of me I cannot remember a single incident of an eye injury from swim goggles. They should just turn out the light in the British Isles and call it quits. A lot of great people there, but a preponderance of really, really stupid bureaucrats.