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The story
A thread on 5ch’s “Nandemo Jikkyo G” board took up the topic of shrinking school swimming classes. School pools only get used for a few months each summer, yet they’re costly to maintain and labor-intensive to run, and lessons are often cancelled due to water temperature or weather. The thread split between posters saying “high schools never had pools to begin with” and others saying “mine did,” revealing a gap that can’t be chalked up to city vs. countryside alone. Measures against extreme heat and gender-inclusive swimwear also came up in the discussion.
What people said
This guy's probably from some remote island high school with like 2 students total.
Is actually having a pool the majority thing?
Is that really that weird? Mine was the same way.
I'm from a remote island too, by the way.
Can't help it, there are a lot of "sensitive types" (kids easily upset or opting out) these days.
They blame it on upkeep costs or temperature, but really it's because too many kids just sit out and watch, plus the parent complaints.
So what do they even do during summer break now?
Probably just play Switch or something.
Whoa… that's kind of sad.
I used to love swimming all day and gaming at night.
A lot of schools now bus kids out to swim schools or public pools instead.
Makes sense — keeping up a pool for just 2-3 months a year is a huge hassle.
There were constantly news stories about schools forgetting to shut off the water and racking up massive losses.
Guess you can't even go cool off at the pool during summer break anymore.
These days going outside at all is the crazy option.
There are students with different gender identities, so schools don't have much choice.
It's a unisex design.
Basically reserved for the swim club.
Mine was a combined middle/high school in Shinjuku ward, and we had a pool.
There's not even enough time to dry your hair afterward.
That's actually the exact reason it got scrapped.
Nowadays it's the opposite — kids get sunburned on the backside from sitting cross-legged on the ground waiting because it's too hot.
They opened it up free for students during summer break, but there wasn't any actual "going to school" for it.
Guess from now on it's just going to fall on parents to teach it?
Swimming lessons are still a popular extracurricular activity, so parents probably just have kids do that for a few years and call it done.
Back in the Showa era (pre-1989), there'd be days they cancelled pool class just because the water was too cold.
There's really no need to train for that.
Even if you're exercising in a pool once you're older, you don't need to actually swim — just walking through the water is plenty of a workout.
If it's really about preventing drowning accidents, they should be doing more clothed-swimming drills instead.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
The aging of school pools and the burden of upkeep costs have become an issue across Japan, and in recent years more municipalities have started outsourcing swim classes to nearby public pools or swim schools. The thread’s split between “high schools never had pools to begin with” and “mine did” comes down to just how much the number of pools varies by era and by a municipality’s finances. While extreme heat has made waiting outdoors a growing concern, some pointed out that swimwear designs have also been shifting out of consideration for gender diversity — suggesting the shape of swim classes now differs quite a bit from school to school. Though not addressed in the original thread, the shrinking of swimming classes raises concerns not only about declining physical fitness but also about how to keep providing safety education, such as clothed-swimming drills.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (“Nandemo Jikkyo G”) thread “[Sad News] Swimming classes in elementary, middle, and high schools are barely happening anymore lololololol“.
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