Posted on 10/20/2019 9:39:04 AM PDT by rickmichaels
As a kindergarten student in 1977, I set out every morning into the vastness of North Toronto. Having been ditched by my older brother at the first hill (he had a reputation to maintain), I would join dozens of other neighbourhood kids on the migration to school.
We walked – or biked – not to be virtuous or to make a statement or to get a sticker when we got there, but because it was the obvious thing to do.
A generation later, this seems like pure nostalgia. According to Ontario’s transit agency Metrolinx, the percentage of 11- to 13-year-old students walking to school within the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area nearly halved between 1986 and 2016, while the number of kids being driven in cars has nearly tripled. The trend is consistent across the country; the national non-profit organization Participaction estimates that a mere fifth of Canadian school children now exclusively walk or bike to school. Cars are poised to become the prime mode of school transport.
Does it really matter? It’s just a trip to school. Times millions of children, times hundreds of days a year.
At the very least, it’s a lost opportunity: the imposition of adult logic – finding the fastest way from A to B – on newcomers to the world, who are much more interested in the puddles, people, plants and pretty much everything else that exists in between.
But the en masse decision to drive to school is also a problem. It diminishes the functionality of our cities (trips to school make up a fifth of morning rush-hour traffic in Toronto) the quality of the air and our claim to be taking climate change seriously. It is, in very real terms, bad for our kids.
(Excerpt) Read more at theglobeandmail.com ...
During the 40s and 50s we all walked to school. Several times a Florida Highway Patrolman gave us a lift. I suspect they were encouraged to do so. Probably not allowed to do so anymore.
One time one picked up my older Brother and me. Joe asked him how far he could follow a criminal. He told us he could follow them as long as he could see their tail lights.
In Jr. High We had an "Insider" that worked in the Attendance Office that checked US in after We went to Our first Class they made Us show to be Present for the remainder of the day.
We could walk almost all the way back to Home via the drainage ditches. We'd pop up at the Quicki Mart and buy a few Quarts of Coke(in the glass bottles) to mix Rum & Cokes with and back down in the ditch until We only had 1/2 a block to the House where We drank, cooked Baked Potatoes and Rib Eyes for the rest of the day.
Yes We were considered the Heathens of the Neighborhood.
Fearful helicopter parents and a media and educational system that encourages such fear.
Fortunately, despite being of the millennial generation, I was allowed/encouraged to walk to school.
In two feet of snow, in July, through a gauntlet of bullies. . .
I stopped Walking to school the moment I got my Schwinn Stingray on my 8th Birthday.
Before that it was one foot in front of the other unless it was raining and I could get a ride from my Mother.
Living in Southern CA, that didn’t happen much.
Many or most kids here within reasonable walking / biking / scooter distance still travel to school unassisted, play outdoors, etc., As I did 60 years ago. I am so happy to live here.
Florida, 50’s.
Look up fantasy statistics from the fifties through the seventies. Change those “runaway” and “missing persons” files to the more accurate than not “raped and murdered”.
Thats part of the head in the sand.
Second. Rape isn’t all committed by adults. For many years idiot parents dismissed accusations of rape by peers as hysteria. Until ubiquitous cellphone cameras revealed how common it has always been.
You thought that you had some words of wisdom, but instead you just thoroughly proved that
My folks sacrificed so much to get me the best education they could.
Sure I could have walked to the closest schools but A) I'd have been a white girl in 99% black middle school and B) white girl in 98% black high school - and both with less than mediocre academics.
No thanks.
But you guys wishing for the days of the 50s have been long, long gone.
Rain...snow...freezing temps.Same with my little sister.
Ever hear of Adam Walsh? Jennifer Wilson? Laura Dunn?
I walked four blocks to school in kindergarten. Then we moved and at least 10 blocks in the 1st grade. This was in 1967-68. When it all changed I have not a clue.
...and bureaucrats and unions.
It may have to do with sidewalks. I walked to school in NYC from K-12. My sister did walk with me till the third grade. I’n rural Maryland we lived too close to the school for my children to take the bus. There were no sidewalks, no crossing guards, no school zone drop in speed limit. I told the town my daughter was handicapped and couldn’t carry books well. Their response was to send her to a bus stop a half mile in the other direction. The amazing part was that the towns mayor’s daughter was hit by a car and killed walking to school along the road they wanted my daughter to use. We decided just to drive her to school. Maybe, it’s cheaper to run busses then build sidewalks and use crossing guards. A lot of parents abandoned the school buses after a middle schooler was caught performing oral sex in the back row. A lot of parents didn’t want their young children on a school bus.
It seems parents stopped teaching their kids about dangers in the world & how to handle it. Some/many kids can’t wipe their own fannies anymore.
I was independent from the time I was 6. I got myself to school. I went to the park, rode my bike everywhere (los angeles sub burbs mid to late 70s. Even started taking myself to the beach on the dial a ride or whateverit was called at 10. The. Started riding my bike to the beach down the san gabriel rivee at 13. Bought my own car at 16 from money from my job. I know millenials who are 25 who have still never bought their own car..one 31 his grandmother just bought him another car. I know 30 year olds whos moms pay their rent, put gas in their cars, pay to have their cars fixed, give them food money. 30 year olds with no rent, mortgage, car payments, dont pay for electricity, water, gas, sewer, garbage, wifi, or their own phones..nota single bill in the world yet are totally broke ALL the time. I know almost no millenials that can do minor repairs on their own car or if a light burns out in their apartment, they will just live without the light. I know people have been bitching about the younger generation since Plato, but i have never seen such helpless people in my life. Even kids with engineering degrees have no imagination or initiative and never ask questions, just seem to do the least amount of effort possible, if there is a part or tool missing or even worse; the wrong part, they will just jam slot A tab G and pretend its good /rant
First time I ever rode a school bus was when I went with my daughter on a school field trip. I walked to and from school every day until I was old enough to drive - I didn’t have my own car but used my father’s car when he was’t working.
We had a large group that walked together, and every window we passed had eyeballs watching us. We were perfectly safe.
My HS freshman daughter started the year walking to the bus stop and riding the bus.
Then there was a 50/60 yo Spanish-accent male with a gun cruising school-bus stops trying to get a kid in his car.
Now I drive her.
I can’t tell you how I lust to catch that scumbag in the act, but he seems to have left town.
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