December 10, 2020 by Robert Franklin, JD, Member, National Board of Directors
Here, the ever-wise Lenore Skenazy asks the pithy question “Is it a crime to trust your kids?” (Sentinel and Enterprise, 11/30/20) The answer seems to be “Not yet, but we’re getting there.”
Jessie Thompson is a mother who lives in South Carolina. She has three kids, ages 9, 10 and 11, whom she allows to walk to school and back each day. They seem to have done so successfully so far, but recently the principal of their school issued an edict that Thompson would have to either ferry the children to and from school each day or they’d be put on the school bus. How the principle intended to enforce that rule in the mornings, I have no idea.
Whatever the case, the local news picked up the story and seems to have backed the principal’s theory that Thompson’s kids weren’t safe because they walked back and forth each school day.
Ominously, at the end of an ABC News4 story about her quest, the anchorwoman said: “Social Services could be called if the children are left to walk home on their own.”
“Left” to walk home. As if the mom is abandoning her kids rather than trusting them.
Indeed, it sounds more like an excerpt from Grimms’ Fairy Tales than an everyday occurrence in the 21st century. “Fearfully, Hansel and Gretel entered the dark forest…”
And, as Skenazy also points out, who’s to say that taking the bus is the safer alternative? After all, we do live in the midst of a pandemic and COVID-19 is far more likely to be contracted in an enclosed space like a school bus with numerous kids than it is in the open air. Plus, the four-lane highway that separates the Thompson children from their school is regulated by “Walk/Don’t Walk” indicators, so crossing there is actually quite safe. Is it also a school zone? Skenazy doesn’t say, but, from her description, it sounds likely. In that case, traffic travels at something like 20 miles per hour, i.e. slowly enough to be aware of children crossing.
But none of that satisfied the principal or the school district.
Meanwhile,
For Thompson, the issue is simple: Why is the school allowed to dictate what kids do once they leave school property?
Good question, but the district is worried about liability for injury to the children, should that occur. The lawsuit would likely allege that the school failed to ensure that the children got on a bus while on school property, a not-impossible-to-win cause of action.
But Skenazy’s interest lies beyond the potential liability of the school district.
But just because it’s not 1,000% safe does not mean it is 1,000% dangerous. That’s a truth we have lost in our black-and-white, litigiously minded culture. No intersection can be guaranteed 1,000% safe — but neither can a car ride to or from the school. Indeed, car passenger deaths are the No. 1 way children in America die. Still, no one stops parents from driving their kids home. How come?
However fretful the school wants to be about Thompson’s children, the issue is in fact a far larger one. The issue is to what extent parents raise their children and to what extent someone else does – someone with no biological connection to them, someone who doesn’t love them, someone who, after school hours, probably gives them no thought at all. The simple fact is that, to the greatest extent possible, parents should be left by the state to raise their children as they see fit. My guess is that Jessie Thompson is a good, loving and responsible mother. She knows her children’s capabilities far better than anyone else and so shouldn’t have to fight with the school about whether they can walk safely to and from school.
Children learn far more from living everyday life than they ever will in school. To the extent we shield them from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, we stunt their growth, we block their passage to adulthood. Needless to say, children should only be asked to do what they’re ready to do and, as long as it’s safe, a bit more. But parents are by far the best judges of that and they have the most to lose if their judgment is wrong.
Finally,
With any luck, South Carolina will pass the Reasonable Childhood Independence Bill that had passed the Senate unanimously and was working its way toward the House before COVID-19 shut the legislature down.
Doing so wouldn’t lessen the school’s potential liability, but it would be an important step toward parental autonomy and away from the ever-increasing state interference in family life.