The CBC had a story this morning on a program set up to help students at a Calgary junior high school use public transit, after the school board stopped making yellow school service available to them. The principal discussed how older students were mentoring younger ones. It all seemed reasonable enough.
Still, it had an underlying tone of anxiety. As though 11 and 12 year olds taking public transit was something scary and overwhelming. But why?
I was 11 when I started taking public transit to school. The preparation I had was the bus schedules. You wait for the bus. You pay get on and pay. Then you get off at a designated stop, and wait for another bus. You need to pay attention to the bus numbers, but this stuff shouldn't be beyond 11 and 12 year olds. Worst case scenario is you miss your bus. Which sucks, but it's not the end of the world.
Coincidentally, today's Globe and Mail has a story about a
Vancouver man ordered to stop letting his children take city bus to school alone.
I don't get why many families today seem frightened or disdainful of public transit. I've been at a friend's house when his teenage daughter had a melt-down because he wouldn't drive her to the mall. I didn't say anything, but I was puzzled why she didn't just take the bus.
We had a party on the weekend, and a few of us who grew up in Calgary were reminiscing about taking the C-Train downtown to go Stephen Avenue Mall, movies, arcades, the Devonian Gardens etc. We remarked that the only people who seemed to use the C-Train to go downtown on a Saturday in those days were adolescents and teenagers like us. Kids also took transit to Southcentre and Chinook malls.