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Federal Law Now Says Kids Can Walk To School Alone (fastcoexist.com)
An anonymous reader writes: There's some good news for "free-range" parents and fans of children being allowed to walk places on their own. A recently approved federal education law will allow students to take alternative forms of transportation to and from school with parental permission. Fastcoexist reports: "Relax, parents. Now you can allow your kids to walk, ride a bike, or take a bus to school, without you or your children getting arrested. The recently-signed Every Student Succeeds Act contains a section (858) that protects the rights of kids to walk or go out alone. The act was sponsored by Utah senator Mike Lee, who is a supporter of the Free Range Kids movement, and provides some hope for parents who feel that their kids should be allowed some autonomy to get by own their own." One can only hope that children will be allowed to go to the park on their own soon as well.
Land of the free my ass. It's a nation of lunatics ruled by fear.
You guys need special permission from the government to be allowed to walk rather than buy a car and pay money to the oil industry? Tell me more about how the rest of the world has no freedom.
Isn't law meant to say what you "can not" do, rather than what you "can" do ?
Those Republicans hate us and want us to die.
They want to give people so much rope that they hang themselves.
Nice rant attempting to shift blame for this stupidity there, AC. The US Supreme Court may be filled mostly by Republican nominees, but they are not the problem here. It is the Democrat majority local courts in some areas that are trying to tell people how to raise their children, something Mike Lee, a Republican Senator is trying to limit.
Their kind thinks freedom is more important than safety.
All I can say is, I'm glad I don't life in the land of the free, home of the brave, but in a land where people are still free to make the brave choice of letting their children walk to school.
And don't understand law. There is no way it is legal to intentionally put children at risk like this.
In most countries it's very common for children to walk to school in the mornings, especially when they get to 10/11 years old.
I understand the US is less pedestrian friendly as a general rule (outside of larger cities) but walking/cycling to school was one of my fondest memories, not to mention both healthy and social!
What is the motivation for having this banned in the first place?
Now there's one hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is!
Sudden, but moderate outburst of common sense.
Those children will have no freedom if they're dead.
In Finland kids walk to school from first grade, age 7. Like I did in the 80's and my kids are doing today.
Kids are also allowed to walk to the park alone.
You should give each student his own gun first, with parent permission of course. Then leave them on the streets!
Since when do federal laws permit things? The constitution forbids laws that forbid things. This stretch toward the idea that whatever is not expressly permitted, is forbidden is a stretch toward tyranny.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
When I was in kindergarten I walked to school every day, it was only around 3 blocks away. Going to the park alone was also normal. The sad thing is that it is a lot safer today than it was back then. I consider myself quite liberal, but I detest the whole nanny state. I've also read numerous articles about parents who are arrested for leaving young children in the car, in the shade with the windows open while running into the grocery store.
Hell, reading this article reminded me about how my mother would go into a local supermarket to do some quick shopping while I watched my younger sister in the car. Today my mother would have been arrested.
As a kid I ran around all over the place without my parents hovering over me every second. I got out and got exercise and explored, something many parents won't allow today. That was before the days of the Internet or before cell phones or bike helmets. The only difference I would have with my own kids is to make them wear a bicycle helmet when riding (due to experience with how it saved the life of a relative several times) and possibly a cell phone.
Kids need to be kids and also to learn responsibility, not be coddled like crazy.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
What kind of country is so hopeless that it is a risk to let children make their own way to school? Where I live, you don't get a free school busing unless the child lives more than 5km from the school. Otherwise, the child is supposed to walk to school. (Or use a bicycle, if old enough to cycle in traffic.) And if you get free busing, it is not a special schoolbus, just a pass that let you ride the local bus for free.
This is considered safe, as it should be. Some nutcases exist, but they tend to get locked up in the psycho ward. You're even allowed guns "for safety" through your constitution, and you can't keep the school road safe for kids? Now, I understand that "safety" may work differently in cities bigger than a few hundred thousand, but lots of the U.S. is towns no bigger than we have - ought to be just as safe.
If someone gets arrested for child neglect, what relief does this law provide? I doubt it would, but I would like to see it do two things:
1. Provide for both civil and criminal relief against the police.
2. Provide for civil relief against the anonymous caller, including a provision that allows the police to be sued if they don't take reasonable means to ascertain the identity of the caller.
Anonymous callers should not be anonymous. Many times, it's malicious people claiming to be good samaritans. They need to be sued into bankruptcy, not protected.
They outlawed this when? Jesus Fucking Christ. What the fuck is wrong with people?
There's some good news for "free-range" parents and fans of children being allowed to walk places on their own. A recently approved federal education law will allow students to take alternative forms of transportation to and from school with parental permission.
"Alternative" methods? Uh, walking is the default method. That's the only one we're born with. Driving is the alternative method, idiot. (Is the idiot here the submitter or "editor"? No way to know.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
We live in bizarro world.
In Switzerland (at least in my home Canton of Zurich), the children's way to school ("Schulweg") is pretty much sacred: Walking to school alone teaches the children to deal with the world around them, and it builds confidence. During the first year of Kindergarten you can bring them, but then they go alone.
When children live too far away from school, there is a bus service, but they make a point of letting the children off the bus some 1000ft from school, so that they still have their "Schulweg."
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In the 4th thru 6th grade I walked to school alone, a distance of about 1 mile...
"Down on your knees you'll be left behind, this is the beginning,"
"Try not to think they can read you mind, this is the beginning." --Reznor
With all this talk of "terrorism," why are we spending precious police resources on driving kids around that can easily make it to school themselves? It is because "terrorism" is a self-perpetuating force. If you truly want to get rid of terrorism, you have to just stop talking about it. That is the job of the government, to make it so we don not even hear about terrorism. Otherwise, the more they talk about it, the more they make a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy and perpetuate an endless conflict. Rinse and repeat.
I walked to elementary school every day until we moved farther away, at which point I alternatively either road my bike or took the bus (and occasionally walked anyway). That continued through middle and high school, and that was up in NY.
Now it's 40 years or so later, I live in GA, and my kids are not allowed to ride their bikes to school. Walkers at my daughter's middle school require permits that they have to pay a fee for.
It's ridiculous.
At the same time, for whatever reason, walking to Elementary school was just fine, and walking to the high school is fine... so it's obviously up to individual school. If you're planning on having kids, and can't afford private schools, do yourself a favor and DO NOT move to GA.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
The utter irony is that the federal government has no legal basis for making a law like this.
Do you have ESP?
Please show me where in the Constitution the federal government is given the power to address such things such as education or children walking to school. I seem to remember that if it isn't listed there, those powers ARE RESERVED BY THE STATES.
What is the motivation for having this banned
Expansion of the business of government, same as the motivation behind nearly all new laws. They have long passed the threshold where new laws bring improvement to society. They are now squarely in the phase where new laws merely bring more government. Of course, if that's your goal, then the new laws are working exactly as intended.
This will just enable children to be radicalized.
Dialectician. Archology.
Dogs are dangerous. They bite people. That's why I stomp on them. Whenever I see a dog, I stomp on it. I even cross the streets to stomp on dogs. Stomp stomp stomp.
Orwellian pretty much sums it up. Government is the problem. The less of it we have making bad or even good decisions for us the better. Are we all puppets that need our strings pulled? Are willing to give up our rights and freedoms and a large part of our economic power to pay for the privilege.
I suppose if Big Brother can set a blanket protection so that parents don't have to fear every local PD and child welfare bureaucrat it's a good thing. It still irks me when I see an article about how government thinks it has the power to tell us what we're "allowed" to do. Seriously? People need permission to exercise their own judgement when it comes to raising their kids?
Reality has obviously been turned upside down, but We, The People are supposed to be in charge and via The U.S. Constitution, we tell the government what it's "allowed" to do.
... legally carry a gun to defend themselves. :-) Guns make everyday life safe obviously.
858, pedo's 420.
There's some good news for "free-range" parents and fans of children being allowed to walk places on their own.
If you refer to someone who gives their children the freedom to be out of your sight for more than 5 seconds as "free range parents" then you are an asshole. If you are someone who calls the cops on someone else because their kids are walking to school, then you should be in jail yourself for harassment. I spent my childhood roaming my neighborhood with my friends exploring and it was fine. We were perfectly safe where we lived and my parents knew that. It would be fine for most children in most places. I walked almost a half mile to catch the bus by myself every morning, year round.
A recently approved federal education law will allow students to take alternative forms of transportation to and from school with parental permission. Fastcoexist reports: "Relax, parents. Now you can allow your kids to walk, ride a bike, or take a bus to school, without you or your children getting arrested.
I'm not aware of ANY location where children are required by law to arrive at school escorted by an adult. I work in a school part time as staff and we have children coming and going on their own routinely. Maybe it's different in some other places but I see kids walk, bike and drive themselves to school all the time with nobody getting arrested or in a huff. Most are delivered by bus or by a parent but if a kid lives withing walking distance of the school why shouldn't they be able to go themselves?
This sounds more like a story from The Onion, it is that silly.
Statistically, children are far more likely to run into pedophiles in their family or in positions of authority than randomly on the street.
True but any teacher will be happy to provide all the empirical and anecdotal evidence you want. I'm on staff at a local school (part time) and I run into kids who are abused all the time to varying degrees. It is almost always from a parent or near relative. I had a kid I worked with just last year who had to go live with his aunt because his dad was an abusive drunk. (Fortunately the kid was 6'2", weighed 230lbs and a good wrestler and was capable of defending himself) Strangers rarely are the problem kids have to deal with. In most cases I'd worry more about certain parents being with some of these kids than the kids walking themselves.
When all children walk to school / play unsupervised, they are fairly safe as drivers know to look for them and, as a mixed age group, can hurt a would be predator or at least raise enough alarm for adults to show up. Now if you take your child by car everywhere, you are making him/her a little safer (at least short term - health/psychological effects are another topic). But if everyone does that, your child is in considerable danger every time they get accidentally separated from you or run on the road to fetch a ball.
I think we need more active measures to restore sanity, like parent volunteers on each corner around school start time to convince the rest of the parents to give independent walking a try.
Back home in India,millions of kids walk/cycle daily to school - maneuvering thru traffic, crossing roads and some walk as much as 5 miles to school. Few even more. Me and brother used to walk 2miles since I was in first grade. Now that we have our children in US, this seems rediculous that kids need to be dropped mere 3 blocks away.
Or as we used to be known as back in my day, kids. We used to go all over the place or be home all day by ourselves in the summer. Can anyone explain how humanity has managed to survive this far without the nanny state watching over us continuously?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Wen I was in 5th grade I used to walk to bus stop at the end of my street. I found out that I was missing important morning cartoon shows, and this aggression could not stand. So I started "missing" the bus, watching my toons, and then walking the 25-30 minutes to school, through a baseball field, cut down an alleyway behind a row of houses, and poof, I was at school. Not only this, but walking allowed me to get there in time to hang outside in the morning with my friends before the bell rang. Walking home also allowed me more friend time, as 3 of my friends all walked home and they lived on the way to my house. There were 2 incidents that made me stop walking alone and they both involved creepers. One such creeper rounded the block in his, slowly stopped to ask if I wanted a ride (thankfully I was only a short sprint from my front door by the time he stopped) The second creeper I encountered was hanging around outside a big yellow apartment building, I'll never forget his face. Greasy and curly black hair, half-tinted coke-bottle glasses, patchy beard. He started walking down the stairs and across his yard mumbling something at me. This guy was probably just a crack head, but I wasn't going to wait and find out. Bolted. Never walked to or from school again.
Far too many people have forgotten the basic philosophical design of the nation and the schools are no longer teaching people the basics. Here's the basic idea that is being lost and much of this current insanity is a result of that forgotten idea:
power and authority in traditional governments:
God ->King->Government Officials->People
power and authority in the American government model:
God->the individual->the community->the state->the federal government
In the American model, all rights and authority belong to the individuals who loan some portion to their local government. Their local government in-turn loans a subset of that to the state to do the things that are too big for a local government but can be done with the power lent by many local governments. The states in-turn loan a subset of the power they were given to the federal government (which was CREATED by the states) to do the very few things, like national defense, that are best done that way. This is why the US Constitution, written by the state representatives at a Constitutional Conventions, so explicitly says that all power not explicitly given to the Federal government is left to the states and the people.
This modern era of "nanny-state" insanity is the result of decades of poor civics education, courts and politicians ignoring the Constitution, and an apathetic public. This idea that the Federal government should be involved in everything, which has dribbled down into states thinking they too should be involved in everything all derived from the massive flood of federal intervention in the 1930s when the courts allowed FDR to insist that EVERYTHING is either affected by or affects "interstate commerce" and thus may be controlled by the feds because they have the Constitution to regulate interstate commerce.
All this garbage would fall away if the American people would only wake up and return to their original philosophical anchors.
Oh, and the power-flow idea at the core of this does indeed involve God as the source of power and authority (though our founders did NOT include any particular church, temple, etc in their beliefs and specifically prohibited the government from creating one) for a very VITAL reason: If your rights come from man or men than they can be taken away by man or men. The idea that rights come from God, leads to the principle in the Constitution that certain rights are unalienable (cannot be taken away, even by a majority vote). Unfortunately, as we become more secular, people are losing touch with the idea of God-given rights.
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - John Adams
A tribe that suffers the loss of to many young women would be unable to propagate itself, efficiently.
At one child per year, a woman can give birth about twenty times. As the Duggars have demonstrated, a single woman can pump out well over a dozen children during her child-bearing years. So unless the tribe has lost 90 percent of its women, or the tribe's infant mortality is still high, it can rebound. Modern industrialized society has solved infant mortality for the most part. So what threat can cost it 90 percent of its women to the point where stranger danger hysteria is still justified?
I know of areas that I do not think a young person would survive if they walked there often. That includes high school age as well as younger children. And it is even more, true for female children. Obviously, there are places and neighborhoods where walking is pretty darned safe but to pass laws which shield parents completely is not such a great idea. There are areas in south Florida that simply must not be walked through by young people.
One can only hope that children will be allowed to go to the park on their own soon as well.
It is. The linked incident resulted in a policy clarification at the state level that made it clear that the family was not doing anything illegal and that CPS should not have been involved in the incident in the first place. Which isn't to say that it fixes the issue at a national level, but at least that family's problems shouldn't have a repeat with other families in the state.
The paedophiles won't be trying to pick up any children when they know that any five year old could be packing a .32.
And bullying will stop: the only thing that stops a bully with a gun is a good kid with a gun.
ARM OUR KIDS!
In my grandfather's day, kids were let loose and they were far more likely to be targeted. Now that we have made a safe place for kids to grow up, people have become paranoid and refuse to leave them alone to play.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I was a "free range" kid long before that term existed.
I think most of us who are adults now were. The constantly hovering parent phenomena seems to have been in the last 10-15 years or so. People have gotten weirdly over protective of their spawn even when it clearly doesn't matter.
Personally I think referring to humans as "free range" is pretty degrading. I'm guessing it was meant as a joke but it isn't a very funny one.
There are a number of upvoted posts on this thread stating "I used to (walk/bus/bike/etc) alone, and I was fine." That's survivor bias - only the people who weren't abducted will be able to post that. If you were one of the kids who walked alone and weren't fine, then whatever bad thing happened to you may prevent you from being here today to write a post (eg: those kids may be dead.)
I don't like having to post this, as I feel strongly that giving kids autonomy is important for building self-reliance, but flawed arguments only weaken our position.
[Walking The Walk] - Posting anon to avoid undoing moderations.
Here in the States, at least here in Wisconsin, kids go to school on their own all the time. My daughter is in 2nd grade and has been walking the whole block to school since she started 1st grade in 2014. As mentioned previously, I think this is more of protecting the act than actually allowing it.
In Switzerland you see 4yr olds walking alone to kindergarden.
Son of a friend of mine in Austria started taking the bus to school (public transportation, not school bus) with 2 changes, almost 1 hour travel time, when he was 7. WTF?
Perhaps a comment on safety and crime rates but this is expected behavior in Japan https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaH7GIHaISs
Well, and it works that way in many places in the US as well. But unlike Switzerland, the US is a huge country with many different regional cultures. What's OK in SLC may not be OK in Berkeley and vice versa. Imagine that.
(Oh, and before you try to tell me that Switzerland has many cultures too, don't bother. I used to live there. Compared to the US, Switzerland is boringly uniform, despite the four different languages.)
Now that's interesting (and enlightened).
Involving the police in ANY aspect of your life where it is not ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY is foolish.
They are not there to help you, and they can only pay attention to anything you say or do that INCRIMINATES you.
That means any evidence that exonerates you is outside of their job description, and the more interactions with police you have, the more likely you are to be a victim of our so-called "Justice" system.
If you are not actively a victim of a heinous crime, just do not call or get involved. Handle the matter without the cops. Your life will be better for it.
If not, you really should :D
How about, "not imprisoned", or maybe "not under parental police state control"?
mark, who a few times walked home from school, uphill, both ways, in the snow, by himself
We are a therapeutic foster home working with difficult children...
15 years ago I had a school therapist tell me with one child "if they can't behave in the car on the way to school, kick them out and let them walk the rest of the way." It's an effective tool.
I tried that again a couple of years ago. I pulled over 1/2 mile from school, and told the child to walk. I followed to make sure nothing happened. Someone called the police. I asked the cop "since when is it illegal for a child to walk to school?" He told me he could arrest me for child endangerment, but he wasn't going to bother because the DA would throw it out. Then he called DHHS, and they took the child from me because I "used bad judgment". A couple of months later they gave me the child again because no one else could handle her.
Most school districts don't provide transportation for students living within a mile of the school; some up to 2 miles. So how were all those students getting to school without putting their parents in legal jeopardy? This has been my argument in favor of free range parenting all along - why is it legal for the government to mandate that your child walk to school, but not legal for you to let your child walk to the park?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
But maybe we should pass a law protecting milk drinkers just in case. There are a lot of cops out there with nothing to do.
It's normal for kids (especially those going to a private school in another city) to take public transit to and from school starting at 1st grade. My commute was a 5 minute walk to a station near home, and about 40 minutes and 2 transfers to a train station where the school bus picked up the kids.
There was actual a recent article citing that - while major medical cases involving children have generally gone down - there has been a major increase in cases of panic attacks, anxiety, etc. Experts are starting to correlate this "over protectiveness" to a lack of social development, which later leads to issues such as anxiety or a generally poor ability to deal with stress, conflict, etc.
I guess once every facet of living a life is declared illegal, we need to wait around for Big Daddy Government to give us permission to do anything. Thank you Big Daddy Government for bestowing your grace upon us proles and allowing us to allow your children to walk to school. Signed Sincerely, another humble subject of the "land of the free."
After their big push to get flying drones registered, they were really not looking forward to requiring the registration of hovermoms and helicopter daddies.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Students are EXPECTED to walk either 1 mile (K-5) or 1.5 miles (6-12) to school - districts that bus students closer to school than that are said to be offering 'Courtesy Busing'.
The federal guilty plea rate has risen from 83% in 1983 to 96% in 2009, a rise attributed largely to the Sentencing Guidelines.
The system was setup and has changed over the years to be harsher still against those who are accused regardless of guilt or innocences. If your accused you've already lost. The government doesn't provide defendants with an equal defence to that of the prosecution. In fact most people can't afford a defence at all and at best get 20 minutes to talk with a lawyer who then proceeds to tell them that pleading guilty is the best course of action (and it is sadly!!!!!).
The prosecutors are suppose to in certain ways be impartial and hand over the complete set of evidence, but as they're incentive (ie to move up the political ladder) is to get convictions they often won't/don't until the last possible minute (or the hide the complete set of evidence thus evidence suggesting your not guilty isn't available to aid in your defence). These games that they play should get prosecutors disbarred, but it doesn't. So for instance they might fail to hand over the evidence for years until just days before a trial begins denying them the opportunity to prepare a defence. The judges often let this happen because the trial has already been delayed *years* and won't put up with any more delays for any reason.
Defendants are often put in a position which forces them to wave there rights to a speedy trial which might otherwise ensure one can get a fair defence (ie can afford to pay the lawyer until the end), but the reality is very different. Even if you don't wave your rights to a speedy trial delays are common (people often get shafted by prosecutor tricks which force them to request more time and thus wave there right to a speedy trial). The ultimate result of delaying is that people who *did* have millions of dollars to blow on a defence blow through that fund. By the time the defendant gets to trial they're out of money to pay the defence and all hope of a fair trial is lost.
I know all too many people who have been prosecuted and lost not because they were guilty of a crime, but because they couldn't get a fair trial. Multiple people I know had *millions* either because they raised the money or were otherwise wealthy. One committed suicide cause they ran out of money because of the dirty tricks of the prosecution and the other plead guilty despite having the best lawyers on the planet and being innocent. Do you want to risk the rest of your life in prison or plead guilty and spend a year in prison? That's the kinda crap that your going to face if your *innocent*.
More than 20 years ago there were drives of unaccompanied minors going to school (walking, eeegads). Perhaps this just releases absentee parents of liability for neglect otherwise would have been a gold mine for cops ticket quotas.
When we were in elementary school we walkd to and from pretty much all the time unless it was terrible weather out. We just did it because we wanted to and we thought it was cool. It was a pretty big school too so its not like we were in some tiny town in the middle of nowhere.
Crazy when you find out something you used to like doing might not even have been "legal"
In California, if you're kid is not in school, you get a call from the school demanding the kid return to school. The schools lose money everyday the child is not there. It's all about the money.
In a post-Newtown era, my children's school requires buses to arrive in front and idle until a teacher personally escorts the children to the classroom. The front doors are locked before entry time, and locked again after entry time. Parent's are not allowed in the school without appointment, and must not be in the school during student entry and exit times. Listed walkers are only allowed to enter when the doors are unlocked, early arrivals wait in a heated foyer.
I live near Newtown. That fucker Adam Lanza successfully planted fear in many teachers and parents heads.
- Anon
It seems that most laws and regulations enacted in the past half century in the United States serve not to punish actual harm done, or the intent to do harm, but to punish the potential to do harm.
Stop it. Already. Unless you can show intent to harm or resultant harm don't punish people for excersising their liberties just because there is potential for harm.
It's like awarding the Nobel Peace Prize on the potential to go good. Or rewarding innovative designs before they are implemented.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
A law must have been passed after it was 1970 that prohibited kids going somewhere alone. Heck, walked 1.9 miles in the Ohio snow because they would only Bus a student if they lived 2 or more mile away from the school! Their first lesson in Kindergarten should be field stripping and assembling a 1911, this is to prepare them for "real" life in the ghettos at the age of 13! Soon, this entire country will be ghetto.
Life is in a state of dynamic equilibrium, it both blows and sucks
I was completely unaware of such absurd laws being enforced in the first place.
America used to be the "Home of the Brave".
Now it's mostly scaredy-cats who are egged on by pants-wetting scaremongers like Trump, Limbaugh and their worthless ilk.