We live next door to a school. On a beautiful spring day, in the middle of a nice suburban town, the kids never walk to school, never walk home, unless accompanied by a guard…er, parent.
Mostly they have to be driven to school in cars, or ride the school bus, although in a small town like this, most of them live only a short distance from the school. And of course many of them have to stay after school in various “programs” until Mommy comes home from work and is able to pick them up.
We have invented a very peculiar way of raising children. On one hand, we believe childhood is so fraught with peril, our streets are crawling with sexual predators, letting one or two kids walk to school unsupervised is the same as pushing them into the lions’ cage at feeding time: and no child may ever be without adult supervision. We are constantly on guard lest they should escape.
On the other hand, we let their age-group peers teach them and socialize them, we give them cell phones and other gadgets so they’re never out of reach of other kids, we teach them that the kids in their class at school are the most important people in their lives, and we allow their minds to be saturated with a pop culture that’s the most effective disseminator of anti-values ever devised by man.
We teach obedience and rebellion at the same time.
The result is supposed to be good for the statists.
It’s not likely to be good for anybody else.
my husband walked my youngest son Robert to and from school till he got old enough to walk to school himself. I was asked to pick him up from school. Meet son at school gate> He walked ahead of me all the way home. Did not know I was to meet him down from the school and walg about 3 feet behind him.
Well said, we lock the front door only to leave the back door open. It must be hard raising kids in today’s world, there are so many outside influences that it’s impossible to shield them from them all.