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Abstract
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I would like to comment on three things: the IJARE editorial in Volume 1, Number 3 (Langendorfer, 2007); Brewster's (2007) letter to the editor in the same issue; and Leclerc's (2007) study in the first issue of IJARE about whether a victim is more or less likely to survive if rescued by a pool lifeguard trained by one organization than a lifeguard trained by another organization.
In your editorial from the third issue (Langendorfer, 2007), you referred to a didactic story about cooking a ham as a metaphor to explain that things happen in the aquatic industry the way they do because we traditionally accept them as they are. Because the International Journal of Aquatic Research and Education is dedicated to disseminating not only research but also aquatic education, I would like to take this opportunity to draw attention to another story that illustrates this same issue, while also raising another one specifically for water safety.
According to this story, a team of scientists placed five monkeys in a cage along with a ladder with some bananas on it. Every time one monkey stepped onto the ladder, the scientists splashed the rest of the monkeys with cold water. After a little while, every time a monkey stepped onto the ladder, the other monkeys attacked and hit him heavily. After a relatively short period of time, no monkey stepped onto the ladder anymore, despite their desire to get the bananas. Then the scientists decided to replace one of the monkeys with a new one. The first thing that the new monkey did was try to step onto the ladder. Quickly, the rest of the monkeys attacked and hit him heavily. After a number of such attacks, the new monkey learned not to step onto the ladder, although he did not know why. Later a second monkey was replaced with a new one, and the same thing happened. This time, the first replacement monkey participated in the kicking and the hitting of the second. A third monkey was replaced and, again, the same happened. A fourth monkey came and the kicking and hitting continued. Finally, the fifth monkey was replaced. So now there was a team of five monkeys, and, although they had never been splashed with cold water, they kicked and hit each monkey who tried to climb the ladder. If we were able to ask the monkeys "Why do you hit whoever tries to step on the ladder?" I can imagine that they might answer, "I do not know but this is how we do things here!"
This story completely agrees with Langendorfer's story and its implications: It is just the way we do things in aquatics. How do those two stories apply to the aquatic-safety or lifesaving industry? One example has to do with accepted and proposed rescue techniques. For over a century lifeguards used body-contact rescue techniques, although other organizations considered them the last option after "swim with aid" rescue techniques. Generally, most organizations replicated traditional techniques, having taken them from previous versions without critically evaluat- ing their quality and effectiveness (Avramidis, 2001). Others changed a particular technique only in an attempt to differentiate themselves from other organizations. Some organizations just claimed to have differences in rescue philosophy (Giles, 1994; Giles & Giles, 1998). As a result, rescue techniques rarely have changed beyond changes occurring in rescue equipment (Wright, 2006). One of those changes was the creation of the rescue tube...
Language: en |