Ice Kai
After losing two students, he built a swimming pool in the village.
According to China Youth Daily, on May 25 this year, a new "water area" appeared in the center of Xinqiao Town, Hengshan County, Hunan Province.
It was a 15-by-5-meter, 1-meter-deep bracket-type swimming pool, erected in the gap between the two teachers' apartment buildings.
This was bought by physical education teacher Tang Huan at his own expense.
In the summer of three years ago, two students he taught drowned, one was trying to save a fellow who fell into the water, and the other was playing in the reservoir.
After the tragedy of that year, Tang Huan asked the parents carefully and learned that the two children had no basic knowledge of swimming.
He always thinks that two children with such good physical fitness can actually learn basic swimming skills after one or two days of teaching, so that they will not drown.
Since then, he has had the idea of taking swimming lessons.
In a rural school that lacks venue resources, how to give swimming lessons to students, Mr. Tang Huan's approach is admirable.
There are always more solutions than difficulties. In my opinion, in order to reduce the drowning accidents of children every summer, in addition to strengthening safety education in schools and families, it is more important to make swimming a compulsory course in primary and secondary schools.
It is necessary to create conditions to build swimming pools in rural schools and villages, which not only provide venue resources for swimming lessons, but also allow children to have a safe place to "play in the water".
According to a survey by the World Health Organization, drowning is the leading cause of death among children aged 1-14 in China, posing a serious threat to children's lives.
According to reports, accidental drowning deaths accounted for 57% of accidental deaths among children, while drowning deaths among children aged 0 to 14 accounted for 56.04% of all drowning deaths.
Every summer, parents and teachers emphasize drowning prevention safety education over and over again, and even some places form "river patrol teams" to prevent drowning, but there are still children who still regard school and parent education as " deaf ears".
To reduce children's drowning accidents, "blocking" or prohibiting children from entering the water is not a good strategy. What should be done is "draining" and let children swim in a safe swimming pool.
Some provinces in my country have proposed to make swimming a compulsory course in primary and secondary schools. For example, in 2017, Hainan introduced swimming teaching in primary and secondary schools through government payment, requiring every student to learn to swim.
However, there are disputes among local education departments and schools as to whether to learn from and promote Hainan's practice.
Lack of funds, many places do not have the conditions to carry out swimming lessons.
Others worry that even if children learn to swim, if there is no swimming pool in the countryside, children will go swimming in wild rivers and reservoirs, and drowning accidents will still occur.
Therefore, the biggest problem is the construction, opening, use and management of rural swimming pools.
To solve this problem, government funding and social financing can be adopted.
In the construction of swimming pools, where conditions permit, it should be included in the financial budget of rural school construction, while in places with weak finances, social fundraising, villagers' fundraising, and public welfare operations can be used to build rural swimming pools and recruit village volunteers to carry out manage.
There is no need to build a high-standard swimming pool, as long as the children can swim, just like the "stand-type swimming pool" purchased by the village teachers at their own expense as reported by the media, it does not require much money.
In addition to teachers buying bracket-style swimming pools at their own expense to teach students to swim, villagers also build swimming pools at their own expense, which are open to children in the village for free.
According to reports, in Qiannan, Guizhou, a woman surnamed Luo built a swimming pool in her backyard, and children in the village can go swimming.
In Hongjia Village, Shitan Town, Xiangtan County, Hunan Province, a villager invested more than 100,000 yuan to transform his fish pond into an open-air swimming pool of more than 140 square meters.
Teachers and villagers have an intuitive understanding of the importance of building rural swimming pools to reduce drowning accidents among rural children, and some people have already taken the lead.
Government education departments and villages and towns should take advantage of the situation to build swimming pools in rural schools and villages to teach children how to swim so as to fundamentally reduce the occurrence of drowning accidents.