Kenza, 34, never learned to swim. Every summer, she dreads invitations to the sea or afternoons at the pool with friends. She claims a migraine, a sunburn, a forgotten swimsuit. “In reality, I am terrified of not having a foothold. I make it up so I don’t have to say I can’t swim.” What she hides, however, affects millions of French people.
According to the latest official data on the subject, taken from the French Public Health Barometer carried out in 2016, 16.3% of people aged 15 to 75 say they do not know how to swim. This represents approximately 11 million individuals. If seniors are the most concerned (35.3% of 65-75 year olds do not know how to swim), young adults are not spared: 5.2% of 15-24 year olds and 9.2% of 25-44 year olds at the time said they were unable to swim where they could not stand. Far from being a marginal phenomenon, this reality crosses ages, sexes and backgrounds.
“To say that we cannot swim is to say that we are not like the otherssummarizes Stéphanie, 36 years old, dental assistant. I never dared to admit it. It’s stupid, but I was afraid that people would judge me.” Sometimes becoming taboo, this non-knowledge is lived in secret. The fear of appearing weak, the memory of mockery or exclusion pushes one to remain silent. Many develop strategies: not wearing swimsuits, inventing pain, pretending to monitor affairs. Because behind this inability to swim often lies lack of access: to learning, to infrastructure, to vacations.
The school and social environment of students strongly influences their relationship to water, to sports practice and therefore to learning to swim. As highlighted in a summary published in June 2021 by the National Institute of Youth and Popular Education (INJEP), “swimming skills are closely linked to the length of their summer vacation, which itself varies greatly depending on social origin. Furthermore, other factors also specifically influence (this) mastery of swimming: in particular, it is weaker among the descendants of immigrants and is, on the other hand, all the more developed if the parents are athletic.” This analysis is consistent with the testimony of Najib, 33 years old: “At home, we didn’t do sports. My father worked all the time, my mother was afraid of water. There was no culture of bathing.”
A problem on a European scale
Over the years, schools offer fewer and fewer swimming lessons, due to a lack of available infrastructure or for budgetary reasons. Consequence: more and more children do not know how to swim. But when they grow up, the need arises to learn this sport, if only for safety reasons. In Europe, there are nearly 20,000 fatal drownings per year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Lifeguard at the Poseidon swimming pool in Woluwe-Saint-Lambert (Belgium), in the suburbs of Brussels, and interviewed by RTBF, Ivan Vloeberghs even evokes a bad memory in the face of these figures. “I knew a child who drowned in the canal and the father jumped in to retrieve him, but he didn’t know how to swim either… We must realize that if we know how to swim, we can at least save someone, or even save one of our loved ones. You shouldn’t underestimate it, it’s very important to know how to swim.”
So, several years later, some adults want to fill their gaps and aquatic centers receive many requests for lessons. “This is why we launched sessions for adult beginners in 2024explains Graziella Baradel, manager of the Belgian swimming pool. During our open day, many adults told us that they wanted to accompany their children to the pool, but that they were not comfortable in the water. And ultimately, this course was a real success. People understand that they are not alone in this situation. And we really have the feeling of accomplishing our public service mission, which is learning to swim.”
A shift in the 1970s
Although the 2016 Public Health France study highlights differences depending on socio-economic background, geographic area or body type, it is still the elderly who are the most concerned. And for good reason, even if it is supposed to be compulsory at school since 1879, swimming instruction in France is much more recent than one might believe, the fault of the lack of equipment which has long been disastrous across the country. This learning only really took hold from the 1970s, thanks to a large-scale public policy: the so-called “1,000 swimming pools” operation.
Launched by Joseph Comiti, then Secretary of State for Youth and Sports (1968-1973), this initiative aimed to massively provide the territory with public basins. This is how the famous Tournesol swimming pools appeared, numbering 183, built throughout France. Or the Caneton swimming pools, also built on the same rapid and industrial model.
Note that this operation echoed two distinct factors occurring at that time. First of all, at the Olympic Games in Mexico, in October 1968, the French delegation won only a small bronze medal in sports swimming (Alain Mosconi in the 400 meter freestyle).
But above all, several drownings marked the news of the summer of 1969. On July 18, in Juigné-sur-Loire (Maine-et-Loire), nineteen children from a leisure center died in the Loire, caught by the current after the collapse of a sandbank. Then on August 18, 1969, in Thonon-les-Bains (Haute-Savoie), the sinking of a pleasure boat on Lake Geneva left twenty-four victims, including fourteen little girls. These two dramatic events brutally revealed the extent of a silent scourge: the inability of a significant part of the population to swim, or at least stay on the surface in the event of falling into the water.
If we often associate this inability to swim with a question of technical learning, we often underestimate the emotional and psychological dimension that accompanies it. For many adults, water is not a place of leisure but of fear, even panic, as underlined by Doctor Frédéric Chapelle, psychiatrist specializing in anxiety disorders, in Santé Magazine: “There is no point in rushing the person. You can lead someone into a situation they don’t like, but never force them. And especially not by surprise. People who have phobias are in control and they need to be able to maintain a certain amount of control. The goal is to no longer trust your fear, but yourself.”
Alternatives to erase trauma
This is why certain alternative approaches – such as the “Foot in the Water” method – offer progressive support, based on trust, dialogue and the reconquest of the body in water, without forced immersion. At home, it is even possible to begin a gentle reconciliation process: relax in a hot bath with essential oils, gradually immerse your face, or test the principles of flotation with objects. For the most entrenched cases, behavioral and cognitive therapies (CBT), sometimes supplemented by hypnosis or sophrology, often make it possible to overcome the phobia in a dozen sessions.
This water trauma, much more common than we imagine, often finds its source in brutal educational methods, still used today. Françoise Solet, a lifeguard for four decades and founder of the Aquadémie in Lyon in 2007, every year supports dozens of adults who come to confide in her about their panicky fear of water.
Questioned by the Reunion media Clicanoo in 2022, she denounces these practices: “Some methods consist of making beginner children jump into the deep end by grabbing the pole… With the bubbles that the jump produces, without glasses, the child does not see the pole. He has water in his nose, (…) he cannot breathe, he is anxious and afraid of dying. When he finally manages to return to the shore, he is often ashamed of what happened to him and will not tell anyone, believing he is alone in this situation. This situation will generate trauma which can lead to water phobia. In forty years of experience, I have collected hundreds of testimonies of this type!” For her, these methods are clearly a form of “mistreatment” institutional, tolerated in the name of “the habit”.
Faced with this reality, public authorities are trying to react. The Ministry of Sports has set up two major programs to strengthen early learning to swim: “I learn to swim”, intended for children aged 6 to 12 from underprivileged areas, and “Aquatic ease”, designed for 4 to 6 year olds, thanks to blue courses integrated into schools or after-school care. The objective is to validate the certificate of knowing how to swim safely (ASNS) from a very young age, in order to avoid reproducing the circle of not knowing, generation after generation.
But this ambition comes up against a major obstacle: the still glaring lack of facilities and human resources. According to a figure put forward by the French Federation of Lifeguards for several summers, there is currently a shortage of 5,000 lifeguards to meet needs and allow equitable access to swimming throughout France.
