Why did Kids Stop Walking to School?

[OnlinePoker]

An interesting mini-doc on kids being driven vice walking/cycling to school. Growing up in the 70's, I can't remember in elementary or junior high seeing anybody being dropped off. But, back then, most families had at least 3 kids so the streets were pretty much teeming with students going and coming in the morning and afternoon. I also lived in a poorer district, so that could play into it as is talked about in the video.

[hlthe2b]

1. Fear of stranger abduction. There are programs in some school districts to assign an adult

to walk with a group of kids each day, picking up more kids as they go. But, at least for elementary schools, allowing kids to walk to school unaccompanied is really discouraged.

Sad as hell...

[former9thward]

63. How many "stranger abduction" cases of kids walking to school?

Far, far, far more get injured or killed in car accidents.

[Shermann]

2. I grew up 10 miles from my school

It was a bit far to walk. We all rode the cheesebox.

[MissB]

24. Same. Lived in a pretty rural area

Bus ride took 45 minutes each way as the bus made its way down long roads, passing multiple pastures. There was one main road but it also went down at least one spur road before picking up the main road again.

We lived about a half mile away from the main road, so we’d walk to the bus stop. Others lived further away, and for the most part had to get to the main road one way or another.

Back then there was only one grade/middle school and one high school. I think they must’ve had three buses gathering kids each morning.

Now there are multiple grade and high schools in the district.

My kids never walked to school either. We live about a half mile away but no one walks unless they live across the street from the school because there are steep windy roads with no sidewalks.

[slightlv]

3. I lived less than 10 blocks from school. The only time my brother and I didn't walk

was if it was snowing a blizzard. And even then, it had better be a pretty big blizzard! (LOL)

[ProfessorGAC]

4. 9 Blocks For Me

Mostly I rode my bike. My mom would take me when raining or too snowy/icy for a bike.
Around here, no catholic schools had busses, so that wasn't an option.
I took the city bus to HS, although in good weather, I'd walk home. (About 3 miles.)#

[unblock]

5. Gotcha both beat. Grew up across from the athletic field. On one side was the elementary school

And on the other was the junior high school. So only one intersection to get to either.

Grades 3-9 I ran home and made myself a grilled cheese sammich for lunch

[ProfessorGAC]

19. At Our Grade School...

...if you lived 4 blocks or under from school, you HAD to go home for lunch. Of course, in those days nearly everyone had a stay-at-home mom.

[slightlv]

40. That was either total convenience or total torture! (LOL)

depending on how much you liked school!

[csziggy]

39. My family lived only five blocks from the elementary school

The junior and senior high schools were a couple of blocks more, across the railroad tracks. We walked to school or rode our bikes until I was in seventh grade and had a bike accident in which I broke my arm (and the bicycle). Then my Dad got a used car for my older sister to use to drive me (and our little sister) to school.

After my sister left for college, my Mom forced me to get my license and I got my grandmother's old Buick. This was not so I could get to school, it was so I could carry my saddle, horse feed, and hay to the pasture where I kept my horse. Mom didn't want all that stuff in her pristine car.

[MichMan]

6. I have seen a big cultural change with parents since I was a child

I'm in my mid 60's so late 60's early 70's was the era I grew up in. Our parents' lives did not revolve around what the kids wanted to do. There were isolated activities like Little League baseball and Boy Scouts, but for the most part we were expected to create our own entertainment in the neighborhood with other like minded children in our own age group. We generally had the freedom to go anywhere we wanted withing biking distance, which easily was several miles, as long as we got home around dinner time. We had a school bus, but I preferred to walk a couple miles (regardless of snow etc.). FYI, it was a working class lower income area.

We have no children, but my younger brother has had 4. Nearly everything his kids did was structured and organized. I live in a rural subdivision, so no safety or traffic concerns, but Halloween drives me crazy. Parents driving the kids from one house to the next all around the subdivision.

[Diamond_Dog]

11. "Our parents' lives did not revolve around what the kids wanted to do."

It was the same for me too, I’m from the same generation as you.

[slightlv]

41. It was so much that way when I grew up,

I couldn't wait to grow up and finally be able to do what I wanted to do! And then, everything shifted and it was all "think of the kids" and I STILL couldn't do all those adult things because they probably wouldn't be good for kids... natch!

So, here I am in old age, and dang it... I do what I want and dare anyone say anything. Sweet little old lady? Nah... weathered old warrior! (LOL)

[csziggy]

42. Yes, there certainly has been a big change!

I'm a little older than you, and in the 1950s and 60s we kids were pretty much feral, especially over the summer. We had streets which were our boundaries, but inside those boundaries, we could run around and do what we wanted, including the swampy lake that was supposed to be the neighborhood park.

That lake had alligators and water moccasins - we kids knew it, if the parents didn't - at least our parents didn't officially know until my dog was killed by a water moccasin. But we were still allowed to run around and play next to that lake. It was a big scandal for us kids when some "Yankees" moved in across the dog and got upset when their little yappy dog was taken by an alligator. They called the Fish & Game people and had the gator taken away. We didn't tell them that they only took the "little" gator (about 5 feet long) and not Big Momma gator (who was over 7-8 feet long). The city found and removed Big Momma when they dredged the lake in the 1970s.

In elementary school, there were no programs or activities for kids. We got out of school and if our parents worked, we amused ourselves until they got home. Over the summer they did have a crafts program, which my sisters and I did, and we made some fun things in it. But it cost money for materials and some of the families in our neighborhood simply could not afford that.

Most high school programs had their activities during school, other than athletic teams and band (which my oldest sister was in). I didn't do much of those - I spent every moment of daylight over the school year on horse back.

[greatauntoftriplets]

7. Because kids live farther from school and have to cross busy roads?

And, as stated above, fear of abduction.

My great-nephew, who started high school last fall, always walked to grade and middle school in the suburbs.

[JustAnotherGen]

8. They still do in my town

We even have crossing guards

[Retrograde]

13. Mine as well

and a lot of them bike to school. Where there's adequate bus service, a lot of them take that. I've even seen private school kids on the train!

[zipplewrath]

9. Walked in kindergarden

I had to walk an 1/8th of a mile to the end of the street. Then a quarter mile to the crosswalk across a 5 lane road at the light. There was one crossing guard at the intersection whose primary job was to make sure the children crossed correctly. I was walked to school on my first day, and everyday after that it was my job to get to and from school on my own.

I now live a half mile from a K-8 school. The cars are around the block, obstructing traffic on several roads. There are no less than 8 crossing guards, mostly directing traffic. I once got "caught" in a business in which the only way anyone would let me out was to turn right into the traffic headed to the school. I of course drove PAST the school without picking up anyone. The battle ax directing traffic outside of the pickup exit stopped me and berated me for driving past the school during discharge time.

The primary challenge of parenting is convincing your offspring that they aren't the center of the universe, when in fact the reality is that your life to a great degree centers around their needs. Guiding them through the early days of self reliance is a big step in disconnecting them from the idea that everything around them should be constructed around their desires, and that they need to learn to engage the world understanding that engagement means balancing their needs and desires with everyone else's.

[llmart]

10. I live next to a large subdivision with lots of kids of all ages.

I used to walk my dog down that way in the afternoon around the time the junior high kids got off the school bus. The kids were dropped off at the entrance to the sub and yet there would be vehicles (mostly SUV's - it's an upscale sub) with all the mothers who were either sitting in their vehicles or standing next to it with the driver's side door open so they could wave their kid down. The kids would get in the car and the mothers would drive them back to their house. I honestly couldn't believe it. This is a very safe area. Junior high kids should be able to walk from the entrance of the sub to their house. Those vehicles would be lined up all along the side of the entrance to the sub.

[Beatlelvr]

12. To be fair

There have been several abductions of kids walking to and from school. Too many predators! Having said that, I live a half block from a middle school on one side, half block from elementary on the other. And the parents' cars lining up is a giant pain. But I really can't blame them.

[Silent3]

18. But there aren't that many predators.

In a way, I suppose, even one is "too many", but you shouldn't base the way you live your life based on very rare events and tiny risks. By an enormous margin children are at far greater risk from parents, other family members and friends of the family, and adults who are supposed to be trusted caretakers.

"Stranger danger" is way overrated.

[maxsolomon]

44. Are you aware this is America?

If the risk isn't 0%, it's 100%. NO GRAY AREAS.

[OnlinePoker]

48. Yep. Better arm all the teachers in case a wacko decides today is the day.

The number of school shootings compared to the number of actual schools is minuscule. It's tragic when it happens, but the right wing media immediately send up the battle cry that something needs to be done to protect the children and this is the crap they start spewing.

[Silent3]

57. It's only 100% that such things will happen somewhere, sometime.

But by that standard it's a 100% risk to ever ride in or drive a car. If you can't distinguish between per-person (or per-child) risk, and the risk of something bad happening to someone somewhere at sometime, then you are ill-suited to making risk/cost decisions.

[UpInArms]

14. Almost 25 miles for me

Rode the bus …

[LiberalFighter]

15. I walked just over 1.7 miles to high school. Sometimes biked.

When I got my drivers license I drove a VW Bug.

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

16. Oh dear, I was a walker, brown bag, 1 m off to school every day, rain or shine , in boots

Better, my mom worked school kitchen, apple crisps and Salisbury steak with Mac and cheese every day,




I never starved, lol

[Oneironaut]

17. Probably pedophile hysteria

[MissMillie]

20. Oh hell... they don't even walk to the bus stop any more

I've seen it... the bus stops every 3 or 4 houses, maybe about 100 feet apart.

[ProfessorGAC]

22. I See That Here

I was behind a bus after school a week or so back.
Bus stopped. Kid got out. Bus moved TO THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR(!) and dropped off 3 kids. One went across the street, the other 2 to the house next door. 2 stops for 3 houses, with no front door more than 90 feet from the others.
Seems inefficient.

[meadowlander]

21. Another factor could be the amount of stuff kids have to carry these days.

I think a lot of later primary, middle and certainly high school kids have school issued laptops they're expected to lug about on top of their textbooks, sports gear, musical instruments, electronic devices, water bottles and lunches, etc.

And with how competitive college admissions are, probably more kids are doing more extracurriculars which complicates how much they have to bring each day and means someone has to drive them to their next thing instead of walking home.

I remember the last time I did back to school shopping with my niece five or six years ago most of the "backpacks" geared for high schoolers were really wheeled mini suitcases like this:

?

[ProfessorGAC]

23. That Could Be Part Of It

I see kids in the schools bringing a lot of after school equipment.
The laptop, however, I don't accept. The chromebooks most schools use weigh no more than a hard cover textbook and it's just the one, not 2 or 3 or 4.
But, all the other stuff is a lot to carry, if they have to walk more than a couple blocks.

[Ilsa]

28. Some kids get backpacks with food and snacks on Fridays

to cover their needs over the weekend. It's too much to carry.

[ProfessorGAC]

43. I Sub At A School Like That

Stuff left over from breakfast & lunch goes into a "share basket". In grades 6-8, there's a fruit snack at 2pm on M, W & F, one day for each grade.
Kids that need are free to pull anything from the baskets at the end of the day.

[Ilsa]

45. That's great! I hate when food is wasted. nt

[ProfessorGAC]

52. Me, Too

I've even taken chocolate milk rather than see it thrown away.

[Cairycat]

25. Some parents do it to have a little time with their kids

We live close to our elementary school, but those teen years in junior and senior high ... it was a good time for my husband to interact with our kids. He missed it when they were all done!

[SYFROYH]

60. I miss the 30 min drive to school with my kid

[Act_of_Reparation]

26. City planning

The suburbs were designed around cars and are notoriously unfriendly to pedestrians, let alone unaccompanied minor pedestrians.

[Ilsa]

27. Some places don't have sidewalks all the way from homes to school.

Communities try to save money by building larger facilities, meaning children will come from further out (miles).

[haele]

29. Two things - traffic and the parents' routine.

Last edited Fri May 5, 2023, 09:09 PM - Edit history (1)

More families have two cats, so it's easier for them to set up a routine where one takes the kids to school and one picks them up.
And traffic, even on residential streets, is utterly congested and increasingly dangerous for kids to walk, even if their school is at a walkable (under 2 miles) distance.

On edit, it's cars, not cats. Though the cats do make sure everyone gets up on time to feed them...

Haele

[treestar]

32. fun typo

makes me imagine the cats leading the kids to school.

[MineralMan]

50. Hmm, how do the cats help?

[Demsrule86]

30. I walked to school in Maywood Illinois when I was 7 and my sister was 5...but we

were approached by two men in a red pick-up...offered us ice cream. My Mom had told both of us a thousand times not to go with anyone without her permission, especially strangers. I wanted to get in the car... my five-year-old sister started screaming and crying...no Mom said no and ran towards a neighbor's house. They drove away. I got hugs although Mom said I deserved a spanking.

The police came to my school the next day and said a bad man was hurting kids. Both my sister and I told them as much as we could. I always wondered what happened but there was no internet in those days and I never knew. We were not allowed to watch TV at that time as Mom felt it rotted the brain so we read and played outside in our yard. I had screaming nightmares for decades -dreamed we got into the car. After that, my mom always drove us the three blocks to school and picked us up. When I had kids I drove mine as well or walked with them at one place we lived. Hubs was an auto engineer so we moved quite a bit.

[BlackSkimmer]

31. Kids in my neighborhood walk.

Quite a few of them.

I like to see it.

[treestar]

33. I walked, it got further each time

I moved up to the next level of school, but it was only through the suburban neighborhood. Elementary school was uphill and jr. high just further uphill. HS was in the other direction, flat mostly.

The neighborhood was full of walking kids.

Now in the same neighborhood and it's a long line of cars all the way down the hill.

[uponit7771]

34. Kids have to carry books and body armor to school, its not the 80s any longer thx to GQP and

... the NRA wanting every thing that moves to have a mass kill weapon

[a kennedy]

35. I'm always envious of the cars the high schoolers drive to school by us now days.

My mom and dad AWAYS made sure we could walk to school if we moved. (Did twice) never had a car in high school. I got my first car from my grandma, I was her favorite, when I was 18. The cars the kids drive now are brand new. So jealous.

[JI7]

36. They do walk if they live close to the school

Also I'm guessing both parents are more likely to with today so there is also the issue of time and it just being more convenient to drive them there before going to work.

[maxsolomon]

37. I still see them doing it every day to the local junior high.

But basically, school is more than a half-mile away.

[Raftergirl]

38. Kids walk in my town to 4 of the elementary schools that are close to their homes, but some live

miles away so they take the bus. And one elementary school is not near any homes at all and on an extremely busy street surrounded by shopping plazas. We deliberately did not buy a home where my kid would go to that school.

We were a bit far from kid’s elementary (about 2 miles and no sidewalks but all residential) and I started allowing him to ride his bike spring of 1st grade.

Middle school had (and still has) a ton of kids who walk, especially after school because it is just up the street from the village center and so they go to the coffee shop, pizza parlor, etc, after school. Also, we have a rail trail very near the middle school, so a lot of the kids who live really far away bike now.

Hardly any high school kids (except 9th grade boys) take the bus. They either walk or get rides with kids who have cars.

Only time I drove my kid was mornings when he had band practice before school was in middle school, because the band bus came at 6am.

He went to a private high school 15 miles from our home so we carpooled with another family who had kids in band, too.The one bus my town was required to bus kids to his private school was too late to get him to practice on time.

[The Wandering Harper]

58. wow, yay!

I get often nostalgic about walking to school in kindergarten and first, no worries except maybe the weather. Glad to hear it's still happens somewhere

[Conjuay]

46. When the family got a second car

Dad took the car to work with him.
Mom would pack a lunch, push the kids out the door, and get busy with what she had to do.

[Kennah]

47. Uphill, both ways, for me

[MineralMan]

49. I walked about a mile to and from school every day.

From 1950 to 1963. Pretty much everyone in my town walked. It was a small town. Best thing was, in high school, you could walk a girl home, usually. We did that a lot. That's how we got time to get to know one another, which led to other things, as naturally it would. You know, like holding hands and stuff like that.

By the way, a mile is about 10 city blocks. So, not all that far, really.

[Jedi Guy]

51. Are you kidding? These days people call CPS if kids aren't directly under a parent's eye.

There was a case a few years ago where two kids (elder of the two was 10, I think, the younger was 6-8) were playing by themselves in a park across from their own house. Someone saw them there without obvious parental supervision (the mom was watching them through a window) and got the authorities involved.

There have been instances in the news over the years where neighbors became aware that 10-12 year olds were home alone and got the authorities involved on the grounds that it's child neglect/endangerment.

When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, we ran and rode our bikes all over the place. As long as our parents knew roughly where to find us or whose house to call if need be, they were fine with it. My dad was in the military and my mom was a nurse, so I was a latchkey kid fending for myself from about 10 years old onward.

Those days are long gone since most people seem to think kids require constant supervision or it's child abuse.

[meadowlander]

53. Very true.

I was a latchkey kid at 7 back in the 80s looking after my six year old brother for an hour or two after school every day. We took the public bus about 10 blocks and walked 2 or 3 either side of it.

Our parents would certainly have been reported nowadays but there has to be a bit of discretion around the maturity of the kid.

There's a Japanese TV show called "Old Enough" that shows kids as young as 4 or 5 being sent on their first solo errands to the shops, etc. I find it terrifying watching kids that young climbing on the bus or subway (or ferries in some instances!) but it's just a cultural norm over there.

[Jedi Guy]

59. Sounds like we had much the same experience, but I was an only, so no sibling to look after.

My mom still feels bad about how often I was alone growing up, but it was what it was and it taught me self-reliance and independence, so all around a good thing, I think.

I remember reading about that show! That would never fly in the States, not even for a second. Stack up Japan's crime rate vs. ours, though, and...

[pnwmom]

54. For most, it's because both parents work now. So either a parent drops them off on the way to work,

or the parent already dropped them off at a daycare, which later took them to school.

[Happy Hoosier]

55. I never walked to school.

Always rode a bus until i bought a car in high school.

[Pathwalker]

56. We live in the country, 6 miles from the elelmentary and jr. high schools,

and 10+ miles from the high schools. We live in Michigan where winters can have a foot plus snow on the ground, and 10 to minus 10 degrees outside. So, the answer for us was: we love our children and were unwilling to send them out to freeze to death, or, in better weather to ask them to walk 12 to 20 miles a day.

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

61. I walked my first four years of primary

It was even a rural school. I was only 5 or so. Neither I nor my mum or nan (we were living with nan) had serious worries about abductions, or even safety.

But it was the 60s, which might as well be on another planet, compared to now. Most mums were still housewives and seemed to have an unspoken agreement to keep an eye out for each other's kids passing their house, to and from school, to make sure they got where they needed to be without harm. I couldn't even stop to look at a butterfly for too long without one of them ringing nan to tell her that I was slagging off, rather than getting to class.

Later, my son loved it when we lived less than a block from his classroom door. Sometimes, if I didn't have to work during the week, he'd come home for lunch, even.

Now, I live in a semi-suburban (outer urban) neighborhood where the K-12 schools are walking distance. All ages take advantage of it, despite how Americans have the reputation for not walking anywhere if they can avoid it. But these kids do. One of my son's neighborhood friends said it's actually faster to walk than to take a car, given the massive traffic headaches around all three schools. From experience of that traffic, I know she's right. The speed zone both cuts down on tragedies, but ratchets up the clogging of cars. So it's the old six and half-dozen dilemma.

The primary school provides one of those crossing guards to protect the little ones from the traffic. The middle school kids get to enter their school grounds from a gate in the back of the campus that opens directly into a main road of our subdivision. Meanwhile, the high school kids next door to the primary school have their own crossing closer to the campus, but are on their own, LOL. The city seems to believe that if they haven't learned how to cross a street safely by the age of 14 (?), then they have bigger problems than school can fix.

[DemocraticPatriot]

62. Sometimes my mother or father drove me to school in the 1970s,

especially in the morning. I usually walked home for lunch... the distance was only about a half mile from home...

Sometimes I also road the bus, getting me closer to home or directly to the school... maybe dependent on the season.


Nowadays, I would be fearful of walking the same routes AS AN ADULT, today....

As a child in the 1970s, we "ran wild" or road our bikes all over in our neighborhood, and beyond--

our favorite "play sport" was playing war, or as we called it, "guns"---
and the better equipped among us had realistic looking toy firearms--- including caps.
(the poorer ones used their fingers, or sticks)


Can't imagine doing that today, we would be gunned down by trigger-happy cops...

[former9thward]

64. The truth is kids have gotten fat and lazy.

But don't take my word for it. Ask the Dept. of Defense.

80% of Americans ages 17 to 24 are unfit for military service

GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (KSNB) - The United States has seen military enlistment numbers drop and there’s a big reason behind that. According to a study from the Department of Defense, 80% of Americans between the ages of 17 to 24 are unfit for military service.

Reasons people have been deemed unfit are being overweight, drug use, or physical and mental health.

https://www.ksnblocal4.com/2023/03/20/80-americans-ages-17-24-are-unfit-military-service/

JFK in his inaugural address said the generation coming up was the most unfit in American history. So he started the Presidential Fitness challenge program for schools. It was fine for a while but died with him. And fitness has gone downhill since with everyone trying to provide excuses for it instead of correcting it.