In my childhood in Germany kids didn’t need to be picked up or dropped off, we either walked or took public transit (not dedicated school buses either). As far as I can tell that’s still the case where I live. It’s a very different urban design that facilitates it, and it results in more human lives in my opinion.
We had in elementary school this thing called “the line”. End of school day kids would gather at different recognizable points on the playground (“the basketball hoop” or such). Every point had a teacher and/or parent waiting. Then they made all kids hold hands two by two and started walking… Every line went to different corners in the neighbourhood, dropping kids off at home and even seeing they get in / someone is home… I’m pretty sure over 85% of all kids got home every day with this incredibly innovative technology… of volunteer parents. Kids that couldn’t get dropped of at home for some reason (no one home or so) continued back to school where they could play for 1 or 2 more hours until they got picked up… Didn’t realise I lived in a fairy tale land until internet times.
Especially kindergarten/elementary school should just be in the neighbourhood itself unless it’s a really really really tiny town (in which case the innovation would be called: BUS).
I live in the UK and walk my children to school every day. There is still a line for school pickup/drop-off because not everyone is so lucky.
This isn’t even an American phenomenon.
Some amount of people will be driving cars to pickup and drop-off every day, even if it’s minimized and even if it’s not always the same people.
So it stands to reason they should do it in some kind of orderly fashion as dictated by the school for the safety of, get this, THE CHILDREN ARRIVING BY FOOT, BIKE OR BUS
We’re also talking about five year olds walking 1-2 mi at the end of a long day. Older kids, fine, but 5 is pretty young. I don’t think my parents were comfortable with me walking/biking home alone until 4th grade.
There’s also plenty of other valid use cases, such as if you are taking your kid to something after school. Or they have an activity which causes them to stay late. Or you don’t want them to take the bus cause you’re already in the neighborhood and why not pick them up as a treat (when I was growing up, buses didn’t have a/c - riding in anything that didn’t have a bunch of smelly sweating kids was definitely a treat)
It might just be possible that in a country of 300+ million people spread over 3 million square miles where each school district is operated at a local level…for two people to have had different experiences.
Either way if your parents thought 5 was old enough to get home from school by yourself, good for you I guess.
They didn’t, I walked home with a friend who lived nearby and hung out until my mom was done work. Could have taken the bus home, but they didn’t want me home alone at that age.
Also, it may not seem like it anymore, but we do have a Department of Education that could pretty easily come up with nationwide rules regarding bussing. They could even afford to subsidize it in areas with lower income. Or, you know, not make education quality a function of an area’s wealth in the first place, and just administer it all at the federal (or even just state) level.
Meanwhile we have busses that don’t always go anywhere close to everyone’s houses (or if they do, they may take multiple hours to get there after dropping off a hundred other kids), almost non-existent sidewalks in most suburbs, dumbasses who don’t watch for people on bikes, and a court system that’s regularly faulted the person on the bike for getting hit.
Greatest country!
Also, at least where I live, you have to have prior permission to ride the bus. Your parent is going to be late picking you up? Guess you’re waiting outside cause they didn’t pre sign the permission slip!
Well in my country if a parent comes picking up their kids by car they have to park their car and walk to the school to pick their kids up. Waiting in your idling car in front of the school while taking up the lane is not allowed.
Yeah that’s why places that routinely have some car pick up come up with ways to manage it, like having dedicated pickup lanes to move parents and children through quickly safely and efficiently.
And just like that you turn even more area around a school into child-unsafe asphalt wasteland, facilitate the private car pick-up further and thus encourage even more people to do the less good way of how to get kids to school. Sometimes fixing a “problem” only creates more, bigger problems. This is one of those times.
It’s not a criticism of people participating in a shitty system and have little say in the matter. It’s a criticism of a system that forces people to make shitty decisions.
You’re never going to win against these people. They all seem to think that if they downvote people enough the economic realities of cars will shift and magically the world will change while they do literally nothing to actually change it.
When I got cut loose from 70s-80s elementary I was on my fucking own. We could walk, ride, skate, whatever. We did not require a fucking adult to care for us. Bell rings? GTFO! BYE!
When my step-son was in elementary, 20-years ago, anything outside of a bus or parent’s car was a non-starter. Fucking pathetic.
Just commenting to support and remind you upvote/downvote counts are not representative of correctness.
I’m british and although it’s easy easy to believe we all walk and get thr bus, the TRUTH is 6% of our schoolchildren have fully complete end to end transport paid by the state (yes taxis) - this is usually due to negligence of the parents.
There is a real requirement for kids to be picked up by cars and removing that option will only hurt the education of the innocent child.
People on this site are very quick to binary extremism and would immediately struggle if given power of choice over others in real world scenarios.
How do you envision kids being picked up after school? Free for all?
Edit: yes I’m doubling down, the people in the replies are idiots.
Obviously walking, biking, or taking the bus is better. Let’s assume that covers 95% of children 95% of the time.
Now what?
I was asking what to do WITH CARS that are picking up kids REGARDLESS OF THE FACT THAT ANOTHER KID MIGHT TKAE THE BUS
In my childhood in Germany kids didn’t need to be picked up or dropped off, we either walked or took public transit (not dedicated school buses either). As far as I can tell that’s still the case where I live. It’s a very different urban design that facilitates it, and it results in more human lives in my opinion.
America’s choking to death on cars
We had in elementary school this thing called “the line”. End of school day kids would gather at different recognizable points on the playground (“the basketball hoop” or such). Every point had a teacher and/or parent waiting. Then they made all kids hold hands two by two and started walking… Every line went to different corners in the neighbourhood, dropping kids off at home and even seeing they get in / someone is home… I’m pretty sure over 85% of all kids got home every day with this incredibly innovative technology… of volunteer parents. Kids that couldn’t get dropped of at home for some reason (no one home or so) continued back to school where they could play for 1 or 2 more hours until they got picked up… Didn’t realise I lived in a fairy tale land until internet times.
Especially kindergarten/elementary school should just be in the neighbourhood itself unless it’s a really really really tiny town (in which case the innovation would be called: BUS).
We envision them taking a bus, walking, or biking home. Not them each getting picked up individually by their parents
When a world without cars is inconceivable, it becomes a presumed condition of the question that the answer must involve cars.
I live in the UK and walk my children to school every day. There is still a line for school pickup/drop-off because not everyone is so lucky.
This isn’t even an American phenomenon.
Some amount of people will be driving cars to pickup and drop-off every day, even if it’s minimized and even if it’s not always the same people.
So it stands to reason they should do it in some kind of orderly fashion as dictated by the school for the safety of, get this, THE CHILDREN ARRIVING BY FOOT, BIKE OR BUS
We’re also talking about five year olds walking 1-2 mi at the end of a long day. Older kids, fine, but 5 is pretty young. I don’t think my parents were comfortable with me walking/biking home alone until 4th grade.
There’s also plenty of other valid use cases, such as if you are taking your kid to something after school. Or they have an activity which causes them to stay late. Or you don’t want them to take the bus cause you’re already in the neighborhood and why not pick them up as a treat (when I was growing up, buses didn’t have a/c - riding in anything that didn’t have a bunch of smelly sweating kids was definitely a treat)
2 miles would be in the bus zone.
I don’t know why people are pretending this is impossible, it’s exactly how it worked when I was in public school. In the US.
Everyone walked or took a bus. Maybe there was like one or two kids who had some sort of special circumstance that required them to get picked up.
It might just be possible that in a country of 300+ million people spread over 3 million square miles where each school district is operated at a local level…for two people to have had different experiences.
Either way if your parents thought 5 was old enough to get home from school by yourself, good for you I guess.
They didn’t, I walked home with a friend who lived nearby and hung out until my mom was done work. Could have taken the bus home, but they didn’t want me home alone at that age.
Also, it may not seem like it anymore, but we do have a Department of Education that could pretty easily come up with nationwide rules regarding bussing. They could even afford to subsidize it in areas with lower income. Or, you know, not make education quality a function of an area’s wealth in the first place, and just administer it all at the federal (or even just state) level.
So…you just had a personal pick-up line at your friend’s house?
We walked home from school. What happened after that is irrelevant. Especially if we’re talking about car-heavy infrastructure surrounding the school.
You mean streets? Cause that’s all we see in this picture, just traffic. Takes streets to go to your personal pick up lane.
Meanwhile we have busses that don’t always go anywhere close to everyone’s houses (or if they do, they may take multiple hours to get there after dropping off a hundred other kids), almost non-existent sidewalks in most suburbs, dumbasses who don’t watch for people on bikes, and a court system that’s regularly faulted the person on the bike for getting hit.
Greatest country!
Also, at least where I live, you have to have prior permission to ride the bus. Your parent is going to be late picking you up? Guess you’re waiting outside cause they didn’t pre sign the permission slip!
Ok that’s lovely. And the ones who are being picked up individually by their parents? They don’t wait in a line?
Why would they, there’s like five of them…
I’m sure you can imagine how if there were more then 5 that could become a problem right?
I suppose you are also capable of imagining schools other than your own?
Well in my country if a parent comes picking up their kids by car they have to park their car and walk to the school to pick their kids up. Waiting in your idling car in front of the school while taking up the lane is not allowed.
Yeah that’s why places that routinely have some car pick up come up with ways to manage it, like having dedicated pickup lanes to move parents and children through quickly safely and efficiently.
And just like that you turn even more area around a school into child-unsafe asphalt wasteland, facilitate the private car pick-up further and thus encourage even more people to do the less good way of how to get kids to school. Sometimes fixing a “problem” only creates more, bigger problems. This is one of those times.
All of England seems to manage it fine
I envision walkable communities
Yes that would be lovely, until then though? We don’t bother having queues or rules because Reddit doesn’t think anyone should have a car?
“You’re not allowed to criticize the status quo unless your solution can be done instantaneously”
This is a strawman argument
It’s not a criticism of people participating in a shitty system and have little say in the matter. It’s a criticism of a system that forces people to make shitty decisions.
Ever heard of a thing called a school bus
Yes, that doesn’t look like a school bus to me though. I assume if he tried to use the school bus lane they’d manage to catch him.
Get rid of this car oriented school design and make walking and biking viable again. Also school buses
Because other countries exist?
I used to walk to school, later bike to school, went to school in a bus etc.
Only times I got picked up/dropped off was when I was sick or had issues with other modes of transport
What country are you assuming I’m assuming exactly? Wasn’t aware there was only one country with both schools and cars
You’re never going to win against these people. They all seem to think that if they downvote people enough the economic realities of cars will shift and magically the world will change while they do literally nothing to actually change it.
I’m American and just commented:
When my step-son was in elementary, 20-years ago, anything outside of a bus or parent’s car was a non-starter. Fucking pathetic.
Just commenting to support and remind you upvote/downvote counts are not representative of correctness.
I’m british and although it’s easy easy to believe we all walk and get thr bus, the TRUTH is 6% of our schoolchildren have fully complete end to end transport paid by the state (yes taxis) - this is usually due to negligence of the parents.
There is a real requirement for kids to be picked up by cars and removing that option will only hurt the education of the innocent child.
People on this site are very quick to binary extremism and would immediately struggle if given power of choice over others in real world scenarios.