Boy, 9, rides US subway alone

Jarvis Street - the old CBC studios! I know it well. There is a ballet theatre in that building now - and some fab renos to some of the older houses in the neighbourhood.

This is all an effect of the "Bad World Syndrome", described by George Gerbner ("Global Media Mayhem", spring 2005). TV viewers perceive the world as a more dangerous place than it really is, since violence is so commonly displayed on TV.

Living is itself a risk.
The suburban bubble only makes kids less confident, overzealous, selfish adults.

Did you used to watch Soupy Sales? lol And that crazy show, Romper Room?

I used to watch Romper Room

I aint crazy

Yeah, I think you kinda are.

shut up.

Both of you.








and that Canadian too

I'm giving away even more about my age when I say I was more of a Razzle Dazzle kid.

when i went to school - and the same when ebeth started school - we when to school as "a pack" .
we would hardly ever be alone but would be in groups of three , four and more kids .
of course , that also allowed us to make more mischief - all pretty innocent stuff : ringing doorbells , knocking on windows , screaming at the top of our lungs .. and telling "dirty" stories to each other .
now we don't see many children walk to school in groups ; they are driven to school , take the schoolbus (a great addition to our pollution worried world imo) or walk alone because parents may have had to go work earlier and couldn't drive them .
i realize that the times are changing - nothing ever stands still - that's probably good .
who knows what the next trend will be .
hbg

It's Howdy Doody Time...


Oh, never mind.


I was a sheltered only child until a couple of days after I turned nine, when I landed in a Chicago neighborhood of kids who played outside until dark most of the year. That change was my first clue about neighborhoods and walking places by myself.


This is a bit of a tangent, but not entirely. I remember working in Santa Monica with one main street between us and a fairly famous beach, and, on the street we were on, interesting shops and bakeries, and so on. To the north, about four blocks, was Santa Monica Place mall (Gehry blah blah) and Palisades Park. Not to mention SM Pier.

None of my co-workers ever walked, much less jogged, at lunchtime.
Never explored, in several years time.

To this day I don't understand that.

I think running around as a kid, and looking as you run around, opens up the world.

My niece flew to visit me when she was 13 and 14 or so. Her dad checked her in, in Los Angeles, and there was some kind of protective watch set up for her, and I picked her up. When she caught the flights back, there was a 'special person' at the airport to see to her welfare, and I was let into the "no visitors" lounge to see her off. This is a girl, now woman, who the dad (mr. spartan) taught to get around in LA by bicycle at an early age. Buses, trains, planes, no big deal.

In a way, she may share some of the traits of Walter's plane mate.. in that she is good with language. In her case, she can talk PBS and street, another way of being multilingual. If you are biking across LA, variations of english and more are good.

I think the reason everyone is paranoid about child safety is the most people are consumed by fear.....of everything. With out even a thought parents have focused on protecting their kids at the expense of educating them and exposing them to life. It will come to a very bad result when these kids are in charge of the world. The Internet only partly compensates for this foolishness. The fear infects the next generation like a virus.

My ex, a writer, heard in some seminar that the prime motivator is fear. I remember that day: I argued myself blue. He came out of it with fear as prime. We haven't talked about it lately, don't know if age has changed his mind. (We still talk, just not so often. Not a rip, a remembered bunch of talk.)

I remember Razzle Dazzle

You do not! you woulda been a baaaaabeeee

I wonder if I'm older than you, ehBeth

nuh unh

Well, I never heard of it - kids.

Well, jeez louise, Roger, you're NOT canajun. Are you?

Well, anyway, I agree with Fbaezer.

In my opinion, the willingness of parents to let children wander around a neighborhood at a fairly early age (9-10), or play alone outside all day at even an earlier age, back in the 1950's in NYC outer borough neighborhoods, was directly related to the common knowledge that kidnapping was punishable by the electric chair. Since at that point in history the schizophrenics were literally locked away in asylums, there was the thought that all other adults, being sane, would not risk the electric chair. Plus, in bygone days, adults tended to stay in their respective neighborhoods. If a child wandered into a different neighborhood, the biggest threat was from some other child feeling territorial about his "block."

I would not risk a child's safety in this world of non-institutionalized schizophrenics, and post electric chair sentencing, for the belief that a child has to grow up sometime. In my opinion, the child first gets to a grown up age safely, and then embarks into a world that is not as safe as only 50 some odd years ago. If there is still a Mayberry (Andy Griffith's town in his sitcom) somewhere, then I would change my opinion only for that small oasis of safety.