Free Republic

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...

BISMARCK, N.D. -- Saje Beard's half-hour commute to class is the envy of her four classmates at a one-room schoolhouse just south of here. Most mornings, the third-grader makes the trek on Ruth the mule. "She's called many things, but Ruth is what we call her in public," Saje said of the 4-year-old gray mule. "Actually, that's my dad's joke. She's really nice and gentle. And she sure is smart." Saje, 9, is an old hand at maneuvering mules. She's been doing it since she was in first grade. "I feel more safe with her riding a mule than having...

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) -- Saje Beard's half-hour commute to class is the envy of her four classmates at a one-room schoolhouse just south of here. Most mornings, the third-grader makes the trek on Ruth the mule. "She's called many things, but Ruth is what we call her in public," Saje said of the 4-year-old gray mule. "Actually, that's my dad's joke. She's really nice and gentle. And she sure is smart." Saje, 9, is an old hand at maneuvering mules. She's been doing it since she was in first grade. "I feel more safe with her riding a mule than...

OSLO, Norway (AP) -- Ingeborg Bertea Thuen was delighted when local authorities offered her free bus rides to the school she's supposed to attend as a first-grader this fall. The last time Thuen started school, in 1903, she had to walk an hour each way."That's great," the 106-year-old told the Oslo newspaper Dagsavisen Friday about the free ride. "It's quite a way to walk."She was born in 1897, but computers in Os township, near the west coast city of Bergen, misread the '97' in her birth date as 1997. That would have made her 6 years old, and the township...