Monday, February 3, 2025

School Bus Epdemic

 https://evolv-electric.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Katonah-Lewis-School-Bus-Line-up-1024x462.jpg

evolv-electric.org

According to World Population Review, buses of one sort or another that take children to school and return them to their homes number between 1 and 1 1/2 million in India and around 1 million in China. Sadly, in the contest for global domination of all kinds, the US trails the Chinese by perhaps 50,000 big yellow buses. Next in line are Brazil and the UK, each with about one tenth of the buses that careen around the US each weekday morning and afternoon for nine months of the year.

In a country where obesity is a national problem, one would think that there would be an emphasis on physical activity, even on walking to school. Of course schools must be within a reasonable distance for the students to make a daily pedestrian commute so instead of the current trend of giant "factory" schools Yankees would need to increase the number of smaller, more intimate neighborhood schools. Since we are seeing major changes in technology and adaptations to it, maybe it would be best to wait for awhile and see how it all shakes out. We don't have a very good picture of how anything will look in even the near future.

The inevitable objection to child pedestrians in the early morning hours is assuring their safety. If that's the case, that a seven year-old can't safely walk three blocks from home to school at eight in the morning, then it might as well be admitted that the society and culture have failed, that the central feature of civilization no longer exists.   


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