I often sit in my big green chair and watch children leaving the J.D. Hogarth Public School. The final bell of the school day coincides with my mid-afternoon tea break.
Of course, I observe more than just kids. I see heavy backpacks weighting down each child, most of them usually hanging much too low on their backs. Big yellow buses, with lights flashing, crowd into the appropriate spaces to load kids who live too far from school to walk the distance. I also see cars and vans parking on the side street or the church parking lot as they take on little passengers.
I assume the young ones climbing into the cars live close enough to the school to walk, but their parents prefer them to ride.
Why can’t they walk? The moms and dads might have a dozen reasons, but I suspect most would cite the danger from human predators. Others might argue that the heavy load of books the students carry home makes transportation a necessity.
I believe another major reason also contributes.
The children need to hurry home so they can redeem the time to play. Organized sports demand that the kids arrive on time at the hockey rink or miss out on ice time. If the ice rink doesn’t call, the soccer field or other sports activity does.
I guess as an old-timer, I have the advantage of remembering different times. From about the middle of the 20th century, stretching back into history, children most often walked to school.
They didn’t carry backpacks because they didn’t bring books home every night; maybe one or two if they had homework.
And yes, the boys often did carry the girls’ books. Although I’m sure we had a high percentage of evil people in the world, we didn’t hear much about them molesting or murdering children.
The students usually headed home to help with the chores, especially if they lived on a farm. Even the town and city kids had lawns to mow, gardens to weed, leaves to rake and snow to shovel. Organized sports, if they existed, occurred most often on Saturdays.
Also looking back to and beyond the middle of the last century, the concept of teenage didn’t exist. As boys grew into their teen years, the after-school activities grew heavier, and by the time they reached 16, many had gone to work, often as apprentices in whatever trade would become their life-long careers. Indeed, parents expected them to begin earning their own living and contributing to the family. As boys went to work, girls began preparing for their futures as housewives. Simply put, teenage as a time to play did not exist until society decided amusement and play outranked personal growth and development.
So during the last 50 to 70 years, we have created a stage in life dedicated mostly to carefree living, therefore reducing the time to learn life skills and develop a sense of personal responsibility.
Why don’t we understand it when children in adult bodies often run amok when parents send them away from home to college or university? Why does it surprise us that crime and drug use has accelerated among today’s youth?
I believe an answer to this problem exists, but we will have to solve it one child at a time within individual families.