Are the Streets Really More Dangerous Today, or Are We Just More Careful?
I went to the wedding of a childhood friend the other day, and in reminiscing about the old days, it struck us how different things were back then. For example:
1) When I was six or seven years old, I would walk to school every day with Alice, a neighbor girl who was only a year older than me. The school wasn’t that far away, but it was at least a half a mile, across a major street. Perhaps things are different in rural areas, but I can’t imagine letting my daughter walk to school with only another kid her age, even now, and she’s nine, not seven.
2) We used to play sports in the street for hours after school. At the wedding my childhood friend Joe said, “We played until the street lights came on–that’s when you knew it was time to go home and have dinner.” How often does this happened anymore? I wouldn’t let my kid, at age 6 or 7, go out of sight to play ball on some other kid’s street for several hours. Even my soon-to-be 15-year-old son is on a constant cell phone leash.
(One other reason why this couldn’t happen today is that the schools pile so much goddamn homework on the kids that there’s no time to spend hours running around and playing after school. Instead, it’s come home, have a snack and then sit down to do homework. And if I sound bitter, that’s because I am…)
So what is it–are things really more dangerous today, or are we just more careful? I suspect it’s the latter, but maybe I’m wrong.
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Hello Glenn,
I don’t know how old you are, but I remember the schools in the 70’s had a much lowered standard and that was why homework requirements were low. It’s interesting that with so much money being spent on public education and with so much homework, that the kids are turning out not knowing basic history and economics. Maybe a lot of this homework is “busy work”. I just don’t know (I’m one of those men having kids in his 40’s because I was too paranoid to jump into the shark tank in my 20’s. I’ll get back to you later.)
About letting kids walk home from school alone: I remember walking about that distance and looking back, I could tell you the name of nearly every person on those homes along the walk. A key thing to also remember is that lots of other kids were walking along as well. So between all these people in the COMMUNITY, we all looked out for each other.
In our suburban area, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people we know. A lot of it is due to mobility: divorce and singleness causes people to have transitory and weak relationships. Growing up, people lived in the same spots for DECADES, not just mere months.
Since we live in a society that no longer has values on what is right or wrong it is a much different world than what we grew up in. When government lets the minority walk over the majority our ship is sinking and it will not be long when no one is able to protect their kids. And the kids being brain washed by the schools will turn on the parents that try to protect them. It is a sad world we live in.