Why is it that our children are not walking to school anymore?

We were a group of four friends, old in years, a bit crotchety, meeting each other for a chat over coffee. We had been released from isolation by the small concessions now allowed under the Covid lockdown legislation. All of us were grandparents, two of us great-grandparents, and it was accepted that we had a combined experience in motherhood and that we knew a thing or two about child-rearing. Well - so we said!
That acceptance led to our subsequent conversation about a recent newspaper report which stated that, because of the restrictions of lockdown, many children were in a poor state of mental health. Psychiatrists and psychologists reported that some children were experiencing anxiety, depression, loss of confidence and worse. They were not happy children. And that led to comparisons. We agreed that children were much better-off in material things than we four were as children, but they did not seem to have the same fun - the street-games, for instance, which taught us so much about organisation, about sharing, about sorting out disputes. Playing online, indoors, physically inactive, cannot be as much fun, as was our tig, our skipping, our marble playing, our hide-and-seek.
One of us four, Kate, then suggested that there might be too much cosseting in modern child-rearing. A few days previously she had an early 9 o’clock appointment in centre-town Clonmel, and though she had allowed herself adequate time to drive from her home in the suburbs, she just made it in time. It was the traffic jamming, she said; long queues of slow-moving cars on King Street, Dillon Street, Rivers Street, Kickham Street and as for Queen Street, Bolton Street, Mary Street - that was chaotic!
“It’s the schools,” Kate said. Nowadays, children do not walk to school. They were being driven, not only to the street frontage entrances, but they were visually supervised until they actually reached the doors of the buildings. All of this to the irritation of the other drivers following in the queue, who were about to do the same.

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Kate’s experience gave each of us the opportunity to recall our own youthful experiences, in times when there were few cars, and in rain or shine, we walked to and from school. We remembered our contemporaries; the girl from Poulavanogue, who walked and was never late; the boy from Glendaloughlin who cycled via the mountain to the High School, the girls who walked to the Presentation Secondary School from Kilmanahan and Russellstown. While these may have been the exceptions, all of us calculated that we spent about an hour a day walking to and from school. This was an hour a day spent in healthy, physical activity.
The morning and the two lunchtime walks may have been sprints, but the afternoon homewards journey took much longer. This was relaxation time, when the necessity for punctuality and concentration gave way to social time; walking home in small groups with friends; chatting, standing and staring, looking at shop windows. It was a socialisation, the give-and-take in the formation of friendship.
Since that coffee-drinking conversation with old friends, I have asked some people involved in parenting and education why so many children no longer walk to school, even when the journey is, apparently manageable.
“Well, the car is convenient, isn’t it? It’s at the front door. And you don’t have to think about safety and security. The school bags with all the books are far too heavy. Crossing the street, even at official crossings, is dangerous. It might rain when they are coming home. And you never know what weirdo they could meet … remember what happened to that beautiful young teacher a few weeks ago when she was jogging.”
All of which is plausible and understandable in the circumstances of parental worries and uncertainties. But there are no certainties in the vicissitudes of life, and all we can do in child-rearing is to teach children how to cross the street; how to negotiate challenges; what to do in worrying circumstances; developing confidence; encouraging conversation; taking personal responsibility; having fun…
Next time I have a coffee conversation with my old friends (old and crotchety) I’ll tell them about my research on children walking to school. I know their conclusion; they will nod their heads and add: “You must say your prayers and recommend them to God.”
And so say all of us, grandmothers and great-grandmothers.

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