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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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[–] viking@infosec.pub 100 points 1 year ago (34 children)

We learned swimming in primary school in Germany, no opting out.

But having lived in several African countries and now in China, it's surprising how many people not only can't swim, but are deathly afraid of water.

[–] punkwalrus@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (11 children)

One of my friends is 33 and she and her older sister can't swim. They grew up on a rural farm far away from any body of water. "Where would we have learned or practiced?" Over the years, I have learned that a lot of people in the US cannot swim, especially when they were poor as kids, even in major cities near water.

[–] plzExplainNdetail@slrpnk.net 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

(Un)surprisingly, the US had lots of public pools, but they got removed because of racism. Definitely affects everyone especially the poor with little means of travel. https://www.marketplace.org/2021/02/15/public-pools-used-to-be-everywhere-in-america-then-racism-shut-them-down/

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