I'm half way through The Coddling of the American Mind and just got through the chapters on children and free play.
When I was a kid I had to take the school bus, but there were many kids who were close enough to our elementary school that they could just walk. One year my homeroom class was next to the back gate and a teacher forgot to unlock it, so we got to laugh at like the 15~20 standing there who couldn't get in (an announcement was made to let the walkers in without a later slip).
I wonder if that would even be allowed today. There was an article on here a few months back where a Canadian got into trouble for letting his kids ride the city bus alone (there were three of them; they always rode together and they were carefully taught the routes and how to backtrack if they missed their stop).
Although I disagree with some of the stuff in his book (he likes to blame iGen and play the fake generational gap game), the free-play time stuff is alarming. There is value to handing out with your friends, without parental supervision, without a phone or tracking device, and building that trust that you will come home by x pm.
This tracking of kids and not letting them out; is it mostly an American/Canadian thing? The article mentioned Germans and these tracking watches, but I remember even as late as 2013, I'd often see heaps of school kids waiting for a tram or a city bus in Melbourne on their own. In New Zealand I'd often see primary school kids walking home or taking a city bus if they missed a school bus (which were just city buses with a "school" sign attached to them).
It'd be interesting to see freeplay by country. I kinda do agree with people like Hadith and Sam Harris who suggest kids should only have flip phones until they start high school.
Are you wondering if kids are allowed to walk today? Yes of course, though the school won't generally release Kindergarteners to walk home by themselves. Can't stop parents from deciding to send them to school by themselves though.
Source: I live a few blocks from the elementary school and have two kids going there. Lots and lots of elementary kids walk to & from school without parents.
IMO it’s definitely not a European thing. My son is currently sleeping outside my apartment in his stroller, in a shared back yard. As a kid I rode my bike a mile though many intersections to get to school. It doesn’t seem to have changed.
I find it ridiculous that people can be arrested/get in trouble in the states for letting their kid sleep in a stroller on the other side of a café window. But that happened recently to a Dane on vacation.
As a side note, I recall watching a documentary about Japanese norms, where the kids are literally taught to be traveling alone in public from a very early age. So this is not just a European thing either.
When I was a kid I had to take the school bus, but there were many kids who were close enough to our elementary school that they could just walk. One year my homeroom class was next to the back gate and a teacher forgot to unlock it, so we got to laugh at like the 15~20 standing there who couldn't get in (an announcement was made to let the walkers in without a later slip).
I wonder if that would even be allowed today. There was an article on here a few months back where a Canadian got into trouble for letting his kids ride the city bus alone (there were three of them; they always rode together and they were carefully taught the routes and how to backtrack if they missed their stop).
Although I disagree with some of the stuff in his book (he likes to blame iGen and play the fake generational gap game), the free-play time stuff is alarming. There is value to handing out with your friends, without parental supervision, without a phone or tracking device, and building that trust that you will come home by x pm.
This tracking of kids and not letting them out; is it mostly an American/Canadian thing? The article mentioned Germans and these tracking watches, but I remember even as late as 2013, I'd often see heaps of school kids waiting for a tram or a city bus in Melbourne on their own. In New Zealand I'd often see primary school kids walking home or taking a city bus if they missed a school bus (which were just city buses with a "school" sign attached to them).
It'd be interesting to see freeplay by country. I kinda do agree with people like Hadith and Sam Harris who suggest kids should only have flip phones until they start high school.