Posted on 01/08/2014 8:16:31 PM PST by chessplayer
A story from one of Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books proves we've all gone soft.
Record-low temperatures caused by the Polar Vortex have forced schools across the country to close this week. Weather-related school cancellations tend to raise anxieties about whether we're a nation of wimps. During President Obama's first winter in Washington, he complained when his daughters' school closed for bad weather: "We're going to have to apply some flinty Chicago toughness to this town." In response to this latest round of school closings, a Virginia mom sighed, "Hasn’t anyone heard of gloves, scarf and a hat when it’s cold?? Just bundle up—people do it all over the world. We are such wimps to cancel school."
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Yup.
And in 1888 they would have informed the public that school was closed how?
Yea but Laura could walk to school, she was not bussed three hours away.
Oh brother...
1) There was no radio, tv or telephones to allow school closure announcements in 1882.
2) Parents had good sense back then to keep their kids home in bad weather.
I looked at an old 1872 map of my Town. There were many more schools then than now and ALL within walking distance (A mile at the most). A 20 minute walk. School was not the overwhelming "must" back then and families had common sense.
In 1882 there was no way to cancel school—no internet, TV, radio, or phone service. How would they have informed parents? By carrier pigeon?
Laura said coal for the fire?? Really?? The Dakotas hadn't even become states.
In 1915 they never canceled it either.
My mother had to ride a horse to school even in a blizard in North Dakota.
They didn’t in southern california in 1940 either but bad weather here is a little liquid sunshine!
They didn’t have school buses back then in 1882.”
They still don’t have school buses at the country school I attended in Kansas. We lived 3 miles from school. When it was snowy, my dad would wrap me in a blanket and tie me on the back of my horse and off we’d go to school. Teacher would untie everyone when they arrived, the horses spent the day in the lean to attached to the school and then the process would be repeated at the end of the day. Nobody missed a day - ever.
This is a truly selective reading of "These Happy Golden Years," since on a different day of that same term that same school was cancelled for cold weather. And, now that I think of it, the entire school term is cancelled because of cold and snow in one of the other books in the series.
The recent double digit below zero temperatures and potentially lethal wind chills in the plains were very dangerous and kids simply waiting for a school bus or latch key kids walking to their neighborhood school were at risk of frost bight regardless of how well they dressed. That said I saw many teens and especially junior high girls running around in hoodies and light jackets that wouldn't be warm enough when it was 40 degrees let alone 40 below zero. It wasn't that their parents could not afford warm coats as they were dressed in the latest fashion trends preferring to risk frost bight rather than not be cooly dressed and their nit wit parents allowed them to do this.
So true.
In my neck of the farming country in Central NY, there was a little one room schoolhouse practically on every road. Drive around with any old timer and they'll point out which house was originally a school house, or where one used to be. There were a lot more children here back then. Two families could fill one school. Now the children are bussed either 7 or 14 miles away.
Even way back when I great up in another state only the elementary schools K-6th grade were within a real walking distance of the students ~ < 1 mile.
Junior HS and HS you are talking more like 10-20 miles aways from some students. Its similar here in Maryland. Its the East coast.
I recall being in Junior HS one day when it was snowing and the snow got heavier and heavier during the morning piling up and finally by noon they decided they better send us home.
Looking out of the school bus windows everything looked white and the bus kept slamming over street curbs BOOM-BOOM because the driver couldn't see them.
Here and now they cancel schools on a faulty forecast.
Uphill!
Both ways!!
Exactly. And this is the same philosophy I used when choosing whether or not to send my kids to school. I didn't care if the school district says schools were open; my country-woman's sense of the weather was more important in making these decisions than what the fool administrators said.
They have a motive. Even if they can get the kids to school for 2 minutes, they get funds...it’s not about the kids and safety. It’s about how much they can get away with.
Presumably parents would exercise their parental prerogative and common sense, to keep their children home. However, probably the most pertinent reason the schools didn’t close and parents didn’t keep their kids home was a lack of doplar radar.
I was talking to a couple of retired school administrators yesterday, and they agreed that the easiest way to end your career was to have a kid get hurt because you didn't cancel school.
They also said that closing school because of the weather was always a lose/lose proposition. Some parents were mad as hell if you close and others are mad as hell if you don't close, and they heard from all of them.
One thing to blame on the EPA and their Draconian regs...
There are additives to the diesel fuel (for emission controls, greenhouse gases) they turn diesel to a jello like consistency. My district is huge w/a lot of buses. They are parked in a lot NOT garaged...so if they cannot get x number of buses turned on by a certain time (even on a two hr delay schedule) it is then too DANGEROUS to allow kids to walk and wait at bus stops for buses that WONT arrive. They is what happened yesterday...school was closed Tuesday and ended up closed Wednesday due to buses NOT starting yesterday.
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