Car Culture isn’t our only social pathology
By Thoreau
The topic of America’s car culture has come up a lot at The Art of the Possible. I share some of their concerns, so I hope I don’t come across as trivializing it when I link to this oldie but goodie article on attempts to move past car culture in some small way: Getting kids to walk to school. Yes, a big part of the problem is suburban layout and all that. But even for kids who live near school, apparently it isn’t just a matter of pointing to the sidewalk and saying “There it is. Go.”
Fast-forward to the 21st century, where liability insurance for kids who walk or bike to school has become one of the major challenges facing SR2S advocates. In 2002, the Environmental Protection Agency funded a $96,000 Portland project to develop a Walking School Bus — in which groups of kids walk designated routes to school under adult supervision — at a local elementary school. Organizers spent months mapping safe routes, conducting outreach to parents, and running criminal background checks on senior citizen volunteers, only to have the project collapse in the absence of liability coverage for kids who might become injured or go missing. A senior-citizen-led walking school bus in Larkspur, Calif., met with a similar fate, according to Kallins.
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A partnership of parents, teachers, planners, health advocates and the private sector, SR2S comes as close as you can to a village raising a child in the United States. With its feel-good emphasis on kids, the program also offers the bike and pedestrian movement an unparalleled opportunity to build enthusiasm — and acquire funding — for sustainable land-use and transportation practices.And yet, as a parent and a pedestrian advocate myself, I’m well aware of the contradiction that governs the entire walk-to-school movement: the thrill at seeing hundreds of kids walking to school during organized events such as International Walk to School Day on Oct. 6, tempered by the twinge of discomfort at their Nike sponsor-clad bodies, the police escorts, even the “on message” signs about the health and exercise benefits of walking to school. This isn’t your father’s walk to school.
I’m all in favor of kids walking, parents keeping an eye out for safety, and communities trying to take some tiny step away from car culture. Still, I think there’s something deeply wrong if they feel the need to form committees, get grants and sponsors, recruit volunteers, conduct background checks, pay for insurance, inspect and map out routes, obtain police escorts, and generally make a big production out of it. Once you factor in all the effort, money, dead trees, meetings (probably driven to), supplies, etc. that goes into this, it wouldn’t shock me if it made more economic and environmental sense to just drive them to school.
I bring this up because, in addition to the mentions of car culture and urban layout at The Art of the Possible, some co-workers were noting at lunch today that in poor neighborhoods the kids will just walk to the park and play soccer with each other, while in more affluent neighborhoods they’ll join a soccer league, buy uniforms, and drive to designated sites where a bunch of adults will supervise the activity. I hate sounding nostalgic, but, I mean, come on! You can’t just go to the park and play?
Comment by Mona —
May 1, 2008 @ 12:05 am
T. - I agree with you, for reasons you state and some you did not. Just have not had the energy to get into that debate at AoTP.
Comment by bill —
May 1, 2008 @ 12:53 am
What happens to these kids that have been chauffered around for a dozen years when they leave home and go to uni?
A colleague was telling me about her 19 year old daughter who was going to school in Edmonton, Alberta and living with an aunt and uncle. She had to take the bus to get to and from campus.
One night of the week she had a late class which meant she had to catch a bus at 7 PM. So every Tuesday she would call her Mom in Calgary long distance from her cell and talk to her until the bus came and she was safely home.
“Why does she do that?” I asked.
“She’s scared, so scared” her mom explained.
Scared? To take the bus at 7 PM in Edmonton?
This is a yuppie kid who has been pampered and chauffered for 19 years to the point where she is afraid to do a simple thing like catch a bus in the evening.
How are these kids going to run the world when we’re gone?
Comment by foolishmortal —
May 1, 2008 @ 1:14 am
To be fair, the carbon footprint of a kidnapped/raped/murdered child is fairly high. On the other hand, making children slightly more difficult to k/r/m only distorts the market, forcing malefactors into jobs, such as athletic coaching, to which they might not be suited, absent such incentives.
Comment by bad Jim —
May 1, 2008 @ 3:14 am
Liability insurance? For kids walking to school?
Back in the 50’s we all walked to school, except for the Catholic kids who took a (short) bus to the parochial school (and seemed to have more holidays than the rest of us). In the 60’s I was in California and taking the bus was the only option.
I still live in the same community, and the buses (now privately owned) continue to ferry the kids, but an amazing number of parents drive their kids in their SUV’s, allegedly because that counts as “quality time”.
Comment by mds —
May 1, 2008 @ 8:24 am
Possibly, but it would make even more sense to just walk them to school, without all the goddamn hysterical narcissistic puffery. “I’d gladly let my children walk to school, but the district refused to install a private tunnel to our house, staffed with a SWAT team and paramedics.” Oh dear god, now that I’ve thought of that, I’m sure someone will propose it somewhere in all seriousness. Is it late enough to start drinking yet?
Comment by quasibill —
May 1, 2008 @ 8:32 am
There’s definitely a cultural component, and it touches on some of the other subjects discussed at AotP - the “fear” angle above, which is enhanced, but not necessarily caused, by active CPS (things that were normal for me to do as an upper middle class kid 30 years ago get you removed from your parents care today).
And part of it is just plain old personal responsibility (I know, I know). Parents today want to be able pay someone (cheaply!) to take care of their kids just like they would if they sacrificed a little and stayed home with them (and of course, this whole trend is exacerbated by damage to middle and lower class savings done by the Fed - if you can’t build a little cushion before having a spouse stay home for a few years, it’s harder to make that decision). The reality of child and elder care is that, unless you’re rich, noone is going to care for your relative like a family member who actually, you know, *cares* for them emotionally. And generally speaking, paying some 20 year old $6/hour to care for 25 at a time can’t ever be expected to come close.
Comment by Felwith —
May 1, 2008 @ 10:58 am
On the contrary, I think these sorts of things are the result of parents taking *too much* responsibility. Specifically, they’re taking responsibility away from their children. Which is understandable, given that the general thrust of most parenting advice is “If something bad happens to your child, it must be your fault for not preventing it.” If you tell parents that they and they alone are responsible for preventing misfortune, how can you be surprised when they react by trying to prevent as much misfortune as possible?
Comment by Thoreau —
May 1, 2008 @ 12:10 pm
mds-
Yes, the city should create a network of routes from homes to schools, and should provide paramedic and police services to respond to emergencies along these routes. We could call the routes “sidewalks.”
Comment by mds —
May 1, 2008 @ 3:28 pm
First, no fair winning your own thread.
And second (out of jealousy), what about meteor strikes, huh? How do your “sidewalks” protect our children from them?
Comment by Khadjair —
May 1, 2008 @ 3:31 pm
Consider the social pathology wrapped up in two words: “stranger danger”.
For decades this has been the canard. Be afraid of the scary ones you don’t know. This was beaten in again and again - halloween cady checked for razorblades and anything not already prewrapped considered poisoned and just flat-out tossed. Parents already, in the mid-70s, considered neglectful if their kids were ever out of their sight.
Already the movement to “protect children from themselves” was in full swing. Tis was the dawning twilight of the Ritalin Age, and it shows. The first generation raised entirely without the spectre of higher-than-modernly-acceptable infant and child mortality due to pathogens of course saw the dangers to their children as being paramount. In just one generation, it was no longer acceptable to have accidents that could hurt or kill a child, no matter their remoteness.
The boomers didn’t have to suffer the spectre of most childhood diseases, banished as they were by vaccine and antibiotic. Each death became a unique tragedy in a way that it really had never been before. And so they overreacted. The thought of such a “wrenching loss” drove many of them to an insane protectiveness. These were -their children-, not larval adults, and the entire focus changed from “making sure they can take care of themselves when they grow up” to “I MUST PROTECT MY BABIES!!!!!!” No longer was it okay to brush off a broken arm as “just the result of kids at play”. Now we teach children to be terrified of their environment, of others, of anything not under strict and total control.
What I always found ironic about all this is that the process of coddling and overprotecting left children very unsuited for handling the very situations they were being protected from. I would rather teach a child to defend themselves than to “protect” them from the danger in the world, only to ave them grabbed, raped and murdered as a young adult because they didn’t know how to fight back. I’d rather a child learn how to handle chemicals properly via a chemistry set, even if it does mean the house may reek of rotten eggs for a couple weeks, rather than that all-too-common college initiation of “don’t mix ammonia and bleach!”
Comment by Thoreau —
May 1, 2008 @ 3:56 pm
Well, what about earthquakes? How will your underground tunnels protect kids from earthquakes that could collapse the tunnels?
Comment by Keifus —
May 1, 2008 @ 4:28 pm
Parents today want to be able pay someone (cheaply!) to take care of their kids just like they would if they sacrificed a little and stayed home with them
Sacrifice a little? Like that second job, you mean?
But agree on most of it: structured play activities are creepy.
Comment by mds —
May 1, 2008 @ 4:34 pm
Um… Replace the tunnels with Einstein-Rosen bridges made traversable with exotic matter. Simple!
Comment by Thoreau —
May 1, 2008 @ 4:51 pm
How do you know that the exotic matter doesn’t cause cancer?
Comment by Andromeda —
May 1, 2008 @ 7:44 pm
bad Jim:
Liability insurance: sadly, yeah. Because if Mr. Yuppie’s kids are in someone else’s care on the way to school, and they run off or something, that someone else gets sued. I’m told, even, that the schools are responsible for kids on their way to school; a local elementary school principal refuses to install bike racks (did I mention that said school is located on one of the nation’s premier bike paths?) because that might, you know, encourage kids to bike to school, and if they got hit his school would be sued.
Quality time in SUVs: actually, yeah. I’m a teacher, and I’ve had tons of the parents (or coworkers with kids) tell me that the only time they can get their kids to talk to them, really talk, is in the car. And I get that. Sometimes it’s easier to talk when you’re stuck together and don’t have to make eye contact.
Thoreau: and how are those affluent suburban kids supposed to get to the park to play, when it’s too far away to walk or bike to because, after all, they live in suburbia? See also: why I do not, and never will, live in suburbia. Ew. Twelve years from now, when my kid’s a teenager and bored, I’ll tell her to get on the damn T and go angst with the punks in Harvard Square, or split some atoms at the Museum of Science, or something. Assuming, of course, that she hasn’t already been kidnapped walking by herself the two blocks to our local elementary school.
Comment by derek —
May 2, 2008 @ 11:30 am
Please won’t some politician sponsor the Grow A Pair America (GAPA) Act?