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Why Can't She Walk to School? (Only 13% of kids walk to school in 2009)
New York Times ^ | September 13, 2009 | Jan Hoffman

Posted on 09/14/2009 7:40:44 AM PDT by Arec Barrwin

September 13, 2009 Why Can’t She Walk to School? By JAN HOFFMAN

TO get to school, the child leaves home by herself, proudly walking down the boulevard in a suburb of a small city in upstate New York. The crossing guard helps her at the intersection. She lives only a block and a half from school. Yet she walks by older children waiting with parents for buses to the same school.

She is 7, a second-grader, and her mother, Katie, hears the raised-eyebrow remarks: ‘Are you sure you want to be doing this?’ Katie said friends ask.

‘She’s just so pretty. She’s just so ... blond.’ A friend said, ‘I heard that Jaycee Dugard story and I thought of your daughter.’ And they say, ‘I’d never do that with my kid: I wouldn’t trust my kid with the street,’ said Katie, a stay-at-home mother, who asked that her full identity be withheld to protect her children.

Katie, too, is tormented by the abduction monsters embedded in modern parenting. Yet she wants to encourage her daughter’s independence. Somehow, walking to school has become a political act when it’s this uncommon, she said. Somebody has to be first.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: childhood; crime; neighborhoods; parenting; school
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To: mysterio

I kind of think the Adam Walsh abduction/murder was when a lot of people started being concerned about child abductions. Certainly he wasn’t the first, but it’s the first one I recall making big national news over a long period of time. I do recall it making me more vigilant when I had my kids at the store, because it brought home the fact that there WERE crazies out there who would take children.


221 posted on 09/14/2009 1:46:30 PM PDT by brytlea (Jesus loves me, this I know.)
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To: brytlea

You can thank Dwight David Eisenhower for that one!


222 posted on 09/14/2009 4:45:54 PM PDT by Karliner (Things are more like they are now than they have ever been before. DDE)
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To: Arec Barrwin
Why Can't She Walk to School? (Only 13% of kids walk to school in 2009)

ANSWER: The druggies, like the sex perverts can only perpetuate an ever increasing demand for their filth by molesting the minds and bodies of the young ones.

Trouble is, many public schools now come complete with druggies and sex perverts on the staff and in the student body.

223 posted on 09/14/2009 4:59:48 PM PDT by Sir Francis Dashwood (Arjuna, why have you have dropped your bow???)
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To: Karliner

I’ll thank him next time I see him!


224 posted on 09/14/2009 5:32:16 PM PDT by brytlea (Jesus loves me, this I know.)
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To: Sir Francis Dashwood

So then, I guess you might as well let them walk to school since they are going to get molested either way....


225 posted on 09/14/2009 5:34:48 PM PDT by brytlea (Jesus loves me, this I know.)
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To: Karliner

Good Idea. Follow me, I’m in the Lord’s Army...we never lose!


226 posted on 09/14/2009 9:47:07 PM PDT by Karliner (Things are more like they are now than they have ever been before. DDE)
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To: dfwgator
And we ate dirt, and we were thankful for the dirt.

Didn't your mama ever teach you not to brag?

227 posted on 09/14/2009 9:53:57 PM PDT by mountainbunny (Mitt Romney: Would you buy a used car from this man?)
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