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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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[–] Skyhighatrist@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

Canada also has a strong cottage culture, where families will spend time in the summer at a cottage, or campground, or other, and they are often on lakes (we have so many lakes, they're just everywhere, at least where people live.) I don't specifically remember learning how to canoe, but I think it happened initially on a field trip with school when I was really young. That being said, not all Canadians know how to canoe. I had to teach a friend of mine how to properly paddle when canoeing solo because he had just never been taught. Ironically, it was his canoe we were using.