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What's a skill that's taken for granted where you live, but is often missing in people moving there from abroad? (kyu.de)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by aard@kyu.de to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I was thinking about that when I was dropping my 6 year old off at some hobbies earlier - it's pretty much expected to have learned how to ride a bicycle before starting school, and it massively expands the area you can go to by yourself. When she went to school by bicycle she can easily make a detour via a shop to spend some pocket money before coming home, while by foot that'd be rather time consuming.

Quite a lot of friends from outside of Europe either can't ride a bicycle, or were learning it as adult after moving here, though.

edit: the high number of replies mentioning "swimming" made me realize that I had that filed as a basic skill pretty much everybody has - probably due to swimming lessons being a mandatory part of school education here.

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[–] tortoise@tortoisewrath.com 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

American here. The nearest swimming pool to my hometown was in Canada. So no.

Edit: I don't think this is normal

[–] Fosheze@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also american here and I learned to swim before I started preschool. But I also live in the land of 10,000 lakes so it's basically a requirement here. So this is another one of those things that is going to depend on which state you're in.

[–] tortoise@tortoisewrath.com 3 points 1 year ago

Oh yeah, I make no claim that any of my experiences are anywhere near universal. Basically no part of the American experience is.

[–] aard@kyu.de 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How big distances / population are we talking here?

I was growing up in a small village, so in elementary school we went by bus to a nearby village with 7000 inhabitants and a swimming pool.

Now we're living in a town with a population of 46000 with its own swimming pool.

[–] tortoise@tortoisewrath.com 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, a small village. It would have been a half-hour bus ride to the town of ~5000, but they couldn't compel all students to get a passport, and the nearest pool in the US would have been about an hour and a half away, so it was never part of the curriculum. Some kids had their parents drive them to Canada after school for private (expensive?) swimming lessons, but it wasn't standard.