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 In 1966, the founder of Infant Swimming Resource, Dr.
Harvey Barnett (pictured left), returned home from
his job as a lifeguard to see an ambulance crew putting his infant
neighbor in a body bag. He had drowned in a few inches of muck and water at the bottom of
a canal.
In response to this tragedy, he offered to teach all of the 5-year olds in the
neighborhood to swim. As each child learned to swim, he learned more about how to teach
young children. The idea was to work with older children until his skills were well-defined
and effective and then move down in age to the next younger group. Barnett learned to teach,
listen, observe and be critical.
By the end of the first season, he was working with 3-year
olds. He took miles of Super 8 movie film, reviewed these films and made extensive notes.
He began communicating with hand signals and verbal directions - a key element of ISR today.
After being observed by several faculty members from the Department of Psychology at the
University of Florida, Barnett began to realize what it would take to get into the realm
of aquatic survival for non-verbal infants. He changed his major to Psychology and earned
a BA with honors. A local newspaper ran an article about his program and 356 students went
onto his waiting list. He had never taught another person to teach his method until tragedy
struck. Two babies on the waiting list drowned before he could teach them and the need to
teach instructors was born.
At this time, Barnett began training instructors and entered
the Graduate School at the University of Florida to earn a Masters of Science from the
Psychology Department (Teaching) and a Ph.D. from the College of Education (Psychological
Foundations). Upon earning his Ph.D., he began teaching courses in special education,
instructional theory, computers and statistics, and child psychology at Cleveland State
University. Eventually Barnett left the university environment and gave Infant Swimming
Resource his full-time attention.
The program has now taught more than 160,000 infants and young children how to survival swim and it has more than 5 million safe and
effective lessons to its credit. More than 400 instructors across the country have been
trained to date.
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