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As school kicked off on Tuesday, the Ottawa Police Service warned parents via its Twitter account not to let kids walk to school alone. The police suggested that parents instead find a neighbour kid to walk their child to school. There’s safety in numbers, and that’s not bad advice.
But why the first half of the tweet? Why the admonition, instead of positive advice, especially for new parents sending their kids off to school for the first time?
The police force tweet speaks to this bizarre, irrational fear we have bought into that there are perverts and criminals around every corner. It’s the same logic that infects federal government rhetoric about tough-on-crime legislation.
The problem, fundamentally, is that it’s just not true. Generations of kids have walked to school every day, with few problems.
There are real ramifications. In the United States, one parent found herself facing charges after leaving her kids in the park while she stopped in at the food bank. Creating a culture where people live in perpetual fear eventually means that not subscribing to that paranoia can lead to criminal consequences.
Luckily, some are fighting back against this ridiculousness. In New York City, Lenore Skenazy has started the Free Range Kids movement, arguing that “our kids do not need a security detail every time they leave the house.”
Kids are actually less likely to be sexually assaulted in bigger cities such as Ottawa and Toronto than they are in smaller Canadian cities, according to government statistics. Not only that, but the vast majority of assaults aren’t perpetrated by anonymous creeps: 88 per cent of minors know the person who assaults them.
It’s not that horrible things don’t happen to kids. There are, obviously, assaults and homicides and children who get hit by cars. But what the narrative of perpetual danger doesn’t recognize is that crimes such as abduction are, as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police says, “very rare”; incidentally, most missing kids are actually runaways.
The Ottawa police should do better than this, and drop the fear mongering. Scaring parents with a tweet achieves nothing other than sustaining the idea that life is endlessly hazardous, to no real benefit to the community.
For children, being accompanied by a parent all the time is stifling. Venturing out alone for the first time is scary, but plenty of things in life are scary; the trick is just to prepare for it. If kids are shuttled to school by their parents each day, they miss out on the benefits of walking or biking – even beyond the obvious ones of stretched legs and sunshine (which, incidentally, improves school performance.)
That walk gives a kid time to think, or to independently meet and make new friends. Key to growing up as a strong adult is spending time away from your parents (sorry parents) and understanding what the world is like without them. Kids learn how to problem solve on their own, and this is hard to do when your parents are around.
Parents already teach kids how to cross streets, they teach them not to talk to strangers, they let their kids know that the police are there to protect them and generally try to prepare them for the world.
This is by no means an argument for deliberately endangering kids. But walking at normal hours in neighbourhoods with hordes of other kids and parents around, to and from school, is not truly that dangerous.
It is important to remember that we don’t, in fact, inhabit the world shown on Criminal Minds.
Kids go out into the world quite equipped to handle themselves, and there are plenty in the community, from Block Parents to crossing guards to teachers, who have got their backs.
So let them shrug on that Jansport, send off your kid with a kiss, and they will make it to school just fine, full of pride and confidence in their own independence.
Tyler Dawson is a freelance journalist and former intern at the Ottawa Citizen and Edmonton Journal. He writes about policing, civil liberties and justice.
查看原文...
But why the first half of the tweet? Why the admonition, instead of positive advice, especially for new parents sending their kids off to school for the first time?
The police force tweet speaks to this bizarre, irrational fear we have bought into that there are perverts and criminals around every corner. It’s the same logic that infects federal government rhetoric about tough-on-crime legislation.
The problem, fundamentally, is that it’s just not true. Generations of kids have walked to school every day, with few problems.
There are real ramifications. In the United States, one parent found herself facing charges after leaving her kids in the park while she stopped in at the food bank. Creating a culture where people live in perpetual fear eventually means that not subscribing to that paranoia can lead to criminal consequences.
Luckily, some are fighting back against this ridiculousness. In New York City, Lenore Skenazy has started the Free Range Kids movement, arguing that “our kids do not need a security detail every time they leave the house.”
Kids are actually less likely to be sexually assaulted in bigger cities such as Ottawa and Toronto than they are in smaller Canadian cities, according to government statistics. Not only that, but the vast majority of assaults aren’t perpetrated by anonymous creeps: 88 per cent of minors know the person who assaults them.
It’s not that horrible things don’t happen to kids. There are, obviously, assaults and homicides and children who get hit by cars. But what the narrative of perpetual danger doesn’t recognize is that crimes such as abduction are, as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police says, “very rare”; incidentally, most missing kids are actually runaways.
The Ottawa police should do better than this, and drop the fear mongering. Scaring parents with a tweet achieves nothing other than sustaining the idea that life is endlessly hazardous, to no real benefit to the community.
For children, being accompanied by a parent all the time is stifling. Venturing out alone for the first time is scary, but plenty of things in life are scary; the trick is just to prepare for it. If kids are shuttled to school by their parents each day, they miss out on the benefits of walking or biking – even beyond the obvious ones of stretched legs and sunshine (which, incidentally, improves school performance.)
That walk gives a kid time to think, or to independently meet and make new friends. Key to growing up as a strong adult is spending time away from your parents (sorry parents) and understanding what the world is like without them. Kids learn how to problem solve on their own, and this is hard to do when your parents are around.
Parents already teach kids how to cross streets, they teach them not to talk to strangers, they let their kids know that the police are there to protect them and generally try to prepare them for the world.
This is by no means an argument for deliberately endangering kids. But walking at normal hours in neighbourhoods with hordes of other kids and parents around, to and from school, is not truly that dangerous.
It is important to remember that we don’t, in fact, inhabit the world shown on Criminal Minds.
Kids go out into the world quite equipped to handle themselves, and there are plenty in the community, from Block Parents to crossing guards to teachers, who have got their backs.
So let them shrug on that Jansport, send off your kid with a kiss, and they will make it to school just fine, full of pride and confidence in their own independence.
Tyler Dawson is a freelance journalist and former intern at the Ottawa Citizen and Edmonton Journal. He writes about policing, civil liberties and justice.
查看原文...
