Panickology 2. A minor panic. A practice panic. The dangers of walking to school and the coming of school bus fleets.
20240128
I started kindergarten at Whittier Elementary School in Berkeley in September 1947, three months before I turned five. I walked the six blocks from 1733 to 2015 Virginia St. All kids walked in those days. My recollection is that I was by myself most of the time. A parent would serve as a crossing guard at the one intersection with a lot of traffic – Grove Street, now Martin Luther King Blvd. I had strict instructions to look both ways before crossing the street and not to accept rides from strangers. I don't recall any kid ever having trouble on their way to or from school.
After we moved I attended Castro elementary school in El Cerrito for the third through sixth grades, then Portola Junior High School and El Cerrito High School. The walks were a half mile, a mile and a quarter, and two miles. Some kids, those who lived as much as 5 miles away in Richmond, rode the bus, but most of us hoofed it. Again, I don't recall anybody having problems. I remember Terry Nord killing himself in a car wreck, and Phil Sebring in a go-kart, but nobody had problems on the sidewalks.
But panic was beginning to set in. There was talk of child abuse. A Berkeley high school student named Stephanie Bryan was kidnapped and murdered. There were a number of vested interests saying that every child should ride the bus to school. Obviously, the school bus manufacturers had an interest. This was a time when the teachers were unionizing. My guess would be that the bus drivers were also unionized and eager for more work. School buses use a lot of fuel and require a lot of maintenance. It is easy for a local budget to accommodate such expenditures. The schools are funded by local bond issues. Borrow and spend the money today, let the taxpayers pay it off later.
School buses became part of the culture. Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes rode the bus. Preschoolers read about Corduroy the bear riding the bus. The "Wheels on the bus" song popped up. No school district wanted to appear so cheap that they couldn't "safely" bus children to school.
Buses were a long-established standard for public schools by the time my first family entered school in the 80s. Private school kids were in carpools or were driven by their nannies. My youngest daughter attended Bethesda's Walt Whitman High School, one safe, easy mile from our house. She never walked that mile, even when I offered to walk with her. The bus stopped at the end of our block. She considered the bus déclassé. Like a majority of her fellow students, she guilted her parents into driving her. Since then, Montgomery County, Maryland has changed to the point that in some areas a parent who lets their kids walk to school is deemed unfit. Paid a visit by the child welfare bureaucracy. Kids must take the bus.
This fear even touches Ukraine. Though we know and recognize a good number of the people living on the half mile along a dirt road from the bus to the school, and there is never a report of crime, the school doesn't want my daughter walking.
The kids are complicit with busing. Though walking would do them good, being lazy is human nature. A choice between walking and riding the bus is no choice at all. Even, as in the case of my daughter mentioned above, walking would be at least as fast as taking the bus.
It is a deal with the devil. In the name of safety we deprive our children of the freedom, the joy of walking and cavorting with other kids on the way to and from school. We deprive them of the exercise and sunshine they would absorb along the way. We hinder their learning how to navigate the city on their own. Worse than buses, private cars confine them to car seats and we ask them not to interrupt as we drive. Whereupon they retreat into their world of music. With my kids, even the noise that escaped their earbuds was intolerably loud and I had to ask them to turn the volume down. Buses and cars anti-socialize them.
School busing, as opposed to school buses, was a far greater catastrophe in another context. As an attempt to improve academic performance of black children it generated racial animosity and broke up neighborhoods as white families moved. Read Forced Justice, Tragic Failure and Judging School Discipline for a spectrum of opinion on that issue. The facts that it deprived kids of exercise, wasted an inordinate amount of their time, and cost a lot to implement pale in comparison to the damage it did to American society.
Those that brought on school buses are among the least significant panics of my lifetime. The arguments were not highly passionate. They mostly revolved around perceived as opposed to actual levels of danger, and money. They focused on the risks but ignored the benefits of the status quo, kids walking to school. It is nonetheless a good case study of how people can be stampeded into expensive and counterproductive courses of action.
That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the kids are all healthy. One month short of spring, the snow is mostly melted. The sun was still shining when we got home from school at 4:30. We haven't had Russian percussion for a week. Not even any air raids. I note with satisfaction that whereas last year the Russians were blowing up our grain export facilities, now we are blowing up their oil exporting infrastructure. Repeatedly and successfully. A lot of the technology is European, mainly from Germany, meaning it can't be easily replaced. I'm happy to see Ukraine take a defensive stance on the battlefield, preserving our soldiers' lives, and hit the Russian economy instead. It is an area in which I think we can inflict significantly more pain and perhaps, with luck, foment internal unrest leading to change within Russia.
Graham
The Bryan case article in the SF Gate had the feel of a James Ellroy novel. Which reminds me, there's still one or two of his books I'd like to read.
A half mile walk alone for a 5 year old girl is just way too risky, no matter how "safe" the neighborhood. The predators scout for these situations.