Dateline Nashville: Students Spotted Walking to School — Outside!
Today in what’s wrong with everything: The Nashville news media is apparently aghast that students at a local high school had to take a walk.
According to WKRN, on the way back from a field trip around 100 students from the Nashville School of the Arts were dropped off about eight-tenths of a mile from school. The students, the station reports, were forced to endure 15 minutes of walking after bus drivers left them at a McDonald’s to attend to other routes.
“As the buses left,” says anchor Bob Mueller, barely concealing his incredulity, “the only way to get those students back to school was to walk.”
WKRN’s Nick Caloway did the same walk himself to double-check the school district’s half-mile estimate of the journey, which school officials said was within the official “walk zone.” Caloway does a pretty good job detailing road conditions that might make what should be a routine activity dangerous. He makes a point of saying the road was “busy” and that one section of sidewalk was closed, though these details are seemingly offered only to strengthen the argument that the students should not have been walking.
How sad that an activity that was commonplace for generations is now completely foreign to much of the U.S. Given the tone of the coverage you’d think these kids flew back from their field trip by flapping their arms.
As for the students, one described the experience as “not fun.”
“It was sunny, it was windy,” she said.
(Hat tip to Lenore Skenazy at Free Range Kids.)
I’m so glad I grew up when I did. I had to walk 2 miles to school almost every morning. I walked to school in 4 plus inches of snow. In sneakers. Good golly, we are raising our children up to be invalids.
And they went to McDonald’s. Hoo-Boy!
Up hill both ways too, eh?
That was more forefathers and grandparents. 🙂
It was all uphill in the AM, though. It was a nice walk home if it wasn’t raining or snowing.
Governments love fat, stupid, unarmed peasants!
FWIW, it appears this was the treacherous route back to the school: http://goo.gl/maps/ZO1vO
Sidewalks are intermittent and there doesn’t appear to be one marked crosswalk near the McDonalds that the students could use to cross the 4 lane road.
And we wonder why America’s children are obese…
Don’t know wether to laugh or to cry.
Aww, yeah, middle America is paving the way for our high tech future!
In South Korea, elementary school children will walk themselves from school around town to their various private lessons. They’re used to walking and they don’t need an escort with them all the time. That is an environment where I want to raise my children, not this America…
Couldn’t they have fired a flare gun into the sky to notify authorities?! Or started a bonfire? Thank God none of them resorted to cannibalism! That’s what I would have done…. Truly heroes, one and all!
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…through broken glass, and when he finally got home his mother and father would stab him to death and dance on his grave. But he was happy.
I lived in Nashville. I could not walk to my gym a mile from my house because there were no sidewalks and it was dangerous to walk there. It was completely ridiculous. I assume these kids were dropped in an area with sidewalks, but the notion that walking is scary is pretty Nashville.
We moved to Chicago where we can walk anywhere — grocers, clothes, restaurants, school. And if we don’t walk, we can take good public transport.
Even in Nashville proper it is like living in a suburb.
It’s amazing how realistic The Onion video productions have become…
Hey, I got hit by a car in Nashville! I was in college visiting a friend’s family, and across the street from their neighborhood was a shopping mall with a movie theater. I tried to go see a movie, by myself, I don’t remember why exactly, thinking no problem, what’s three blocks? IIRC, it was Dances with Wolves. However, the mall was surrounded by a six lane arterial, with no sidewalk or crosswalk. I made it to the movie. On the way back, I tried to cross, I though with the light, and bam! I found myself face down on the pavement in a pool of blood in front of a Buick. I spent the night in the hospital, and got something like 50 stitches in my forehead (the doctor lost count). In the end I was none the worse for wear, except for a Harry Potter scar still on my forehead. In that case, walking three blocks was pretty much life-threatening.
10 miles uphill, both ways, in 5 feet of snow with no shoes(we were poor), over broken glass and had to routinely fight off a pack of wild rabid dogs.
And dinosaurs. Don’t forget the dinosaurs.
Yes velociraptors .
Such a variety of websites you post your BS on. Do you even work? Ohhhh wait THis IS your work
How much does Soros pay you?
Are you a genuine freak or do you pretend to be a dyke?
Do you fcuk cleric? Seriously 37 years old and rips tickets at a movie theater. SOMEONE must be servicing him