8 ms·

Why Japanese Kids Can Walk to School Alone

71 points by idoco 11y ago

zanethomas 11y ago
i grew up in pasadena, ca in the 50s when i was 5 i walked many blocks to kindergarten in the first grade i took the public bus halfway across town and then walked a few blocks someone offered me candy and a ride one time, i declined has something changed?
- selectodude 11y ago
  I think the only thing that's changed nobody offers people candy and a ride anymore. I was taking public transportation all over, including to school, by myself growing up in Chicago, and never ran into a single issue other than the fact that the CTA sucks.
coldcode 11y ago
I really wonder if the actual vs imagined crime rate against children has changed since I was a kid in the 60's. I rarely got driven to schools unless I took a bus. Often we walked or rode a bicycle. Perhaps it's related to more media coverage of crimes causing more fear and back in those days we had little understanding so we weren't worried. I was mugged once walking on Halloween when I was 6-8 or so by a group of teenagers who took my candy and pushed me to the ground. They then continued to walk down the street (toward my house) and I ran home crying, told my dad, he confronted the teens, identified their parents (not sure how) and called them. In the end I got something of the candy back and I don't know what happened to the teens. I don't think I ever liked Halloween much after that experience.
- kuschku 11y ago
  I’m now 19, I grew up in Germany, and I was never mugged or anything – there were some people who jumped in front of my bike to annoy me, but never actual muggings. Nothing of my stuff has ever been stolen. And as kids, even just 5, we walked to the bakery and bought bread rolls for the family breakfast.
  - muhmi 11y ago
    +1 Its the same in Finland. Now my kids walk to school every day.
    - kuschku 11y ago
      Obviously. Often kids start to have to walk to primary school here with 6, so they start to walk alone to library, bakery, etc with 5. And when they start to have to use public transit to get to secondary school with 10 every day, it makes sense that they start by going shopping or similar places with 8/9 by bus/metro/etc.
      - Symbiote 11y ago
        What's the furthest you reckon they walk? I was driven to school, though I walked 250m to a neighbours house half the time for the lift. Walking to school would have taken over half an hour at a good, adult pace. (The fear was probably traffic more than strangers.)
        kuschku 11y ago
        My elementary school was 1.4km away, the nearest bakery was like 800m, the grocery store was next to the bakery, the library was next to the school. From 10 on I had to go to a secondary school which was 4.5km away, so I usually used the bike, but walked sometimes. At that age I also started using the bus to get to the other side of the city, or to take the bike and go to a cinema 12km away with friends, etc. We obviously had almost no traffic here – except for busses and bikes. And construction vehicles.
- Lazare 11y ago
  > I really wonder if the actual vs imagined crime rate against children has changed since I was a kid in the 60's. I'm not sure if the data exists for that period, but violent crimes against children in the US are declining sharply. Assault is down 33% between 2003 and 2011, rape down 43%. Matches up with the broader collapse in violent crime in the US. Now you asked about the 60s, and for murder as a whole (other violent crime follows the same trend), the 30s and 80s were peaks, and the 60s and right now are valleys; if we assume violence against children tracks violence as a whole, it's probable that the the crime rate against children right now is roughly the same now as it was in the 60s (ie, tied for the lowest level since the great depression). Conversely, I think it's pretty clear that the imagined crime rate (for everything, including children) is basically at an all time high. Polls routinely show that overwhelming majorities of people believe crime is getting worse, even as we settle in for another decade of collapsing crime rates. So in short, while I'm not aware of any research that answers your question exactly, the answer is very clearly "yes".
- rcurry 11y ago
  Ah, getting mugged for your candy on Halloween - an annual tradition in my neighborhood.
- protomyth 11y ago
  Go over to this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10365463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10365463 and see how many people are calling walking with cash dangerous and foolish. It is mostly imagined given the CDC stats. I was a kid in the 70's and both of us were in much more danger than a kid today. Media has 24 hours to cover things today as opposed to an hour or two back in the day. We hear about everything today and ratings are made by scaring the crap out of us. Welcome to the shutin world for children.
  - sliverstorm 11y ago
    I was definitely nervous when I sold my last car and was rolling around with $20k in my pocket. My brain knows the odds are very low, but my instinct knows the expected loss is very high. Those kind of risk are hard to evaluate.
    - wavefunction 11y ago
      It seems if you were selling a used car for $20k that you might have the forethought to request a cashier's check from a reputable bank. Easier in many ways than living with the terrible toll of worrying about walking around with 20k in your pocket...
      - protomyth 11y ago
        Well coldcode & sliverstorm, I guess you don't have to visit the other thread to see what I was talking about. Its almost as if crime had gone up instead of way down since the 60's and 70's, or everyone is really confident everyone else can avail themselves of all the financial instruments a bank offers.
      - sliverstorm 11y ago
        In general checks cannot be trusted, no matter the bank it claims to be from.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
jordigh 11y ago
I used to go out alone as a kid in Mexico City, but only within walking distance of my home. I was 12 the first time I rode public transportation on my own. Nothing ever happened to me, but within my social class it was seen as dangerous and unusual that my parents would let me ride the metro and peseros alone (I used to go to the most expensive private school in Mexico City).
coldtea 11y ago
Japanese? Kids all over the world walk to school alone. In places ranging from Spain to Singapore, including developing countries like Indonesia. I was around 9 or 10 when I started riding public transport. Tons of kids my age on the bus too.
- tgb 11y ago
  Even your list is missing the US and suggests that kids don't walk to school alone in the US. Distance was the only thing preventing me from walking to school alone as a kid, and I did bike home many days 4th-6th grades. The kids who lived close walked or biked almost every day from an even younger age, though the youngest would be accompanied.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    >Even your list is missing the US and suggests that kids don't walk to school alone in the US. Not 100% familiar with schools in the US, but in old movies you could see kids walking to school in all suburban settings -- up until the mid-nineties or so. That or school buses. After that, in most movies there's a parent taking his kid(s) to school now (typically in a SUV), or the school bus.
    - nols 11y ago
      It's common for kids in the US to walk to school if the school is close enough. Sprawl means many children don't live within walking distance though.
    - tgb 11y ago
      It is common for parents to walk students to school or the bus stop. But walking alone is also common.
- ekianjo 11y ago
  This. This dumb article has just invented hot water. Seriously dont journalists do a bit of research before pushing posts?
- 11y ago
Mz 11y ago
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10320944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10320944
beloch 11y ago
Violent crime rates, including those against children, have continued to decline year over year in Western countries for a very long time now. It is now safer for children to be out alone at younger ages than ever before. The odd thing is that paranoia is at an all time high. Leaving a five-year-old unsupervised, even at home, is flirting with a visit from child protective services. There is less to protect children from than ever before, but parents are more protective than ever. It has reached the point that same are concerned that today's children aren't given enough freedom to experiment and fail. This is not by choice. It is enforced by society and law. Consider what would happen if you sent a three-year-old out on an errand as is done in Japan. A child that age, alone on the street, will attract attention, primarily of the concerned and meddling kind. The child will be asked where their parents are and promptly returned to them. The parents will be chewed out for reckless child endangerment as a bare minimum. While one can argue today's child-associated paranoia is a result of fear-mongering by the media, the real problem is that it's backed up by the law. Parents who are too trusting and permissive will soon find themselves in court. That has to change.
- DanBC 11y ago
  > Leaving a five-year-old unsupervised, even at home, is flirting with a visit from child protective services Most accidents happen in the home. Most people do a poor job of making their home safe for infants. (EG look at the number of people in the UK who buy socket covers but who don't bolt their TVs to the wall) Perhaps I misunderstand what you mean by "leave a 5 year old unsupervised" - does this mean "parent in the home but in different room"? Or "parent pops out to the local shop for half an hour"? Because five year old children are far too young to be left unsupervised for anything over short lengths of time, and if a parent is regularly doing that they probably need a chat from child protection social services.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    A 5 year old child is old enough to go to a grocery store, buy stuff, and walk back home. I’ve done it, all my neighbors did it, and everyone I know has done it. Kids being at home for an hour or 2 at that age is no issue either. It’s not something special – everyone does it.
curiousjorge 11y ago
you can drop your wallet a hundred times and people in Korea and Japan will return it to you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWW4xzlrOWQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWW4xzlrOWQ I've heard reactions from Canadians who go to Korea or Japan and they are puzzled that nobody would steal, even if wallet was bulging with cash and the guy was passed out on the streets, he doesn't have to worry. To me this is the success of a homogenous neo-confucius brings order in society. Self reflection and honor prevents a cesspool of cultures ready to rip each others throats from forming. I ponder if Western societies can continue to function if they just keep letting anyone of any background and culture in especially when they choose not to integrate and shout 'racism' when they have to do something that requires the slightest bit of thinking and respect. Sometimes I look at my city, shootings, the violence, gangs, mental illnesses and ponder what life would've been like in Korea or Japan.
- kuschku 11y ago
  I’ll tell you a story that happened in a... well, not very good district of a German 300k people city. A district with 44% migrants, and 42% unemployed, and some of the highest crime rates of Germany. I was 18, it was the day after I finished my final high school exams, I had partied with a few girls, most went home, 2 of us – me and a friend – were trying to find a place to drink something. We ended up at some gas station, as all other stores were closed, and tried to buy alcohol. Some people were standing there, too, waiting in a queue, some of them migrants, some obviously homeless, some kinda nice dressed. A friend of mine tried to pay with her EC card, and was too drunk to use it or enter her PIN – so she asked if someone of the other crowd would be able to help her (I, myself, was also quite drunk). So she gave this guy her wallet, told him to "take out the yellow EC card, PIN is 2814"[1], and indeed, he did this. They – also wanting to buy alcohol – asked us if we wanted to follow them to a nearby party. We did, and ended up having a fun night playing singstar with them. -------------------------------- In Conclusion: It’s not ethnicity, or social class, or homogenity that leads or prevents crime. We’ve done similar things not once, but several times. And you know what? Never was anything stolen. Once I forgot a jacket, and couldn’t remember where anymore – next morning someone had posted the jacket onto a facebook group of the city with 60k users and I was able to get it back. -------------------------------- [1]: PIN changed for obvious reasons
mlvljr 11y ago
Was same in USSR for me (starting from the 1st grade, age 7) :)
- trhway 11y ago
  ditto. Both parents were working like the majority of the parents back then in the USSR, and there were no chance for them to get us to and from school. And outside of school, we were roaming streets and forest/seashore around the city completely on our own.
mianos 11y ago
The paranoia is commonly considered as a result of wider media coverage. Every single national and, often, international media covers most child abductions. This widening of coverage gives the, incorrect, impression that child abductions are on the rise. Statistics suggest they are falling rapidly in modern times. .. Citations are left as an exercise for the reader. Personally, I feel the lack of diligence on parents by parents in teaching children safety around roads is probably the last bastion of letting the little critters roam free. (Wait for the lights in all cases when with your children. Never walk behind cars, if in any way possible, stopped or moving.
pavornyoh 11y ago
This was posted and discussed at length on October 2nd here..https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10320944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10320944
saeranv 11y ago
"But small-scaled urban spaces and a culture of walking and transit use also foster safety and, perhaps just as important, the perception of safety." I thought of this while I was watching the video. Japanese suburban fabric is much more compact, fine grain, mixed-use and more spatially coherent than North American equivelents. These contribute to the'eyes on a street'[1] condition in which neighborhood stores and residences look out onto public streets and reinforce communal saftey. The cul-de-sacs and degenerate grids of North American suburbs not only make walking incredibly inefficient[2], but also increase the isolation and community-orientation of the streets. [1] Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities [2] http://urbankchoze.blogspot.ca/2014/10/bad-habits-of-north-american-cities_9.html http://urbankchoze.blogspot.ca/2014/10/bad-habits-of-north-a...
kailuowang 11y ago
I am from China, I go to school alone since 6. Most other kids do that since 7. That was some decades ago. Now I live in U.S. it has become unthinkable to me, mostly because the lack of gun control and the number of gun owners who are so ready to fire their weapons in public.
carsongross 11y ago
A strong, homogenous culture solves public trust problems (which are special cases of the prisoner's dillema problem.) Multiculturalism destroys social trust. America is the most culturally diverse western nation, ergo it has the lowest public trust. As America continues to diversify, and in as much as Europe does so, we can expect social trust to continue to decline. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Putnam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Putnam
- jazzyk 11y ago
  Not true. Many more things in the anglo-saxon culture (GB, US, Canada, Australia) are trust-based - your signature is usually good as gold, unlike continental Europe which requires tons of affidavits, ceremonial seals, additional paperwork, etc. All of the above anglo-saxon countries are multicultural. Continental Europe has been mostly homogeneous (until recently, but still).
  - maus42 11y ago
    Nothing to say on the culture issue, but what are your experiences of continental Europe? This sounds more of a question how the bureaucracy works and its traditions. Doctors putting fancy papers with ceremonial seals on their walls sounds like a US popular TV thing, for example. Do they really do that?
  - IkmoIkmo 11y ago
    > continental Europe which requires tons of affidavits, ceremonial seals, additional paperwork, etc. Like what and like where, specifically? (Dutch here, can't really confirm or come up with examples that'd match that). > All of the above anglo-saxon countries are multicultural. Continental Europe has been mostly homogeneous The generalisations are too broad, putting say France in the same category as Poland makes no sense. Canada/US/Australia are of course in a diversity category of their own as de facto lands of immigrants (although that overstates diversity, I think. Dutch and British heritage in Canada is a pretty meaningless difference nowadays as a proxy of heterogeneity of society), but I feel GB's diversity is pretty similar to various European countries. It's hard to make exact comparisons due to different data points. It seems outside of the anglo-saxon world, most governments (urged by sociologists) have let go of defining demographics in terms of 'race' (whatever that means) or skin color, but rather based on ethnicity or heritage. So in GB you get things like white and black and asian (with the latter data often split into India/Pakistani) and in the Netherlands or France you'll get things like 'parents both French born, one parent foreign born, parents both foreign born', with all kinds of splits for nationality. It's hard to compare but I feel GB's multiculturalism is pretty similar to say France or the Netherlands just to take an example.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
somberi 11y ago
In Manhattan I see bunch of kids in the subway going to their school on their own. They make the subway compartment so noisy I usually avoid it :)
rtz12 11y ago
Isn't that pretty normal? I walked to school alone my whole life. Walk to the bus stop, take the bus to school, walk to the school. Pretty usual.
mc32 11y ago
One thing the article failed to mention directly is the shared monoculture. Their culture is such that some aspects of it are observed by most people there. As they mention, young children are involved early on with community work. They also have instilled compliance from an early age --ever notice all the voice commands everywhere? In school, at the subway, at the combini, at the depato, at the escalator. It's pervasive and it results in a society homogenous in many aspects. Of course, there are dissidents and outcasts and otaku and non-conformists, but most observe core attitudes. I think this contributes to the way they can have a degree of dependability on others. That's not to say there aren't deviants and people who take advantage of the norms. But to borrow from their vocabulary, they are unique, in some ways, and I don't think it's transplantable.
Yabood 11y ago
I think its cultural thing, nothing more. All kids in Iraq and neighboring countries sent their kids to school alone. Public schools didn't have any transportation, so you pretty much had to walk to school regardless of where you lived. I was lucky that my school was only a mile away. Kids who had their parents walk them to school were made fun of, which is why I think its a cultural thing.
dripton 11y ago
I walked to kindergarten alone at age 5, in the US. In the 1970s, when there was much more crime than there is today. I mostly blame cable news for helicopter parenting. The data shows that there is much less violent crime than there was 40 years ago, but when something bad does happen and cable news jumps all over the story, it creates a false impression of the world being a very dangerous place.
jmadsen 11y ago
Interesting: I submitted this exact story a week or so ago - from a different website. Opening is word for word, different image. http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/09/why-are-little-kids-in-japan-so-independent/407590/ http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/09/why-are-little-kids-i... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10320944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10320944 I can't imagine The Atlantic steals stories; obviously, this must have been re-sold. Just interesting to see it.
- dang 11y ago
  Ah, thank you. I felt sure we'd had a big thread about it before, but couldn't find it earlier. Citylab is a project of the Atlantic, btw. We've been seeing more of this cross-publishing lately, without links back to originals. I fear it will move the needle towards more dupes on HN (actual dupes, where we've already had a significant thread about the story in the last year or so).
  - jmadsen 11y ago
    "Citylab is a project of the Atlantic" Didn't know that - was surprised the author would have rights to resell his work, and in such a short timespan. That explains!
seesomesense 11y ago
Young children walking to school is common here in Australia. It is not considered the slightest bit newsworthy. I live opposite a primary school. Everyday I see children who must be 6 or 7 years old walk to it. I guess that it is all to do with the level of criminality in the general community. The USA does have a homicide rate and a violent crime rate that is significantly higher than than of many other rich nations.

71 points by idoco 11y ago

i grew up in pasadena, ca in the 50s when i was 5 i walked many blocks to kindergarten in the first grade i took the public bus halfway across town and then walked a few blocks someone offered me candy and a ride one time, i declined has something changed?

selectodude 11y ago
I think the only thing that's changed nobody offers people candy and a ride anymore. I was taking public transportation all over, including to school, by myself growing up in Chicago, and never ran into a single issue other than the fact that the CTA sucks.

coldcode 11y ago

I really wonder if the actual vs imagined crime rate against children has changed since I was a kid in the 60's. I rarely got driven to schools unless I took a bus. Often we walked or rode a bicycle. Perhaps it's related to more media coverage of crimes causing more fear and back in those days we had little understanding so we weren't worried. I was mugged once walking on Halloween when I was 6-8 or so by a group of teenagers who took my candy and pushed me to the ground. They then continued to walk down the street (toward my house) and I ran home crying, told my dad, he confronted the teens, identified their parents (not sure how) and called them. In the end I got something of the candy back and I don't know what happened to the teens. I don't think I ever liked Halloween much after that experience.

kuschku 11y ago
I’m now 19, I grew up in Germany, and I was never mugged or anything – there were some people who jumped in front of my bike to annoy me, but never actual muggings. Nothing of my stuff has ever been stolen. And as kids, even just 5, we walked to the bakery and bought bread rolls for the family breakfast.
- muhmi 11y ago
  +1 Its the same in Finland. Now my kids walk to school every day.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    Obviously. Often kids start to have to walk to primary school here with 6, so they start to walk alone to library, bakery, etc with 5. And when they start to have to use public transit to get to secondary school with 10 every day, it makes sense that they start by going shopping or similar places with 8/9 by bus/metro/etc.
    - Symbiote 11y ago
      What's the furthest you reckon they walk? I was driven to school, though I walked 250m to a neighbours house half the time for the lift. Walking to school would have taken over half an hour at a good, adult pace. (The fear was probably traffic more than strangers.)
      - kuschku 11y ago
        My elementary school was 1.4km away, the nearest bakery was like 800m, the grocery store was next to the bakery, the library was next to the school. From 10 on I had to go to a secondary school which was 4.5km away, so I usually used the bike, but walked sometimes. At that age I also started using the bus to get to the other side of the city, or to take the bike and go to a cinema 12km away with friends, etc. We obviously had almost no traffic here – except for busses and bikes. And construction vehicles.
Lazare 11y ago
> I really wonder if the actual vs imagined crime rate against children has changed since I was a kid in the 60's. I'm not sure if the data exists for that period, but violent crimes against children in the US are declining sharply. Assault is down 33% between 2003 and 2011, rape down 43%. Matches up with the broader collapse in violent crime in the US. Now you asked about the 60s, and for murder as a whole (other violent crime follows the same trend), the 30s and 80s were peaks, and the 60s and right now are valleys; if we assume violence against children tracks violence as a whole, it's probable that the the crime rate against children right now is roughly the same now as it was in the 60s (ie, tied for the lowest level since the great depression). Conversely, I think it's pretty clear that the imagined crime rate (for everything, including children) is basically at an all time high. Polls routinely show that overwhelming majorities of people believe crime is getting worse, even as we settle in for another decade of collapsing crime rates. So in short, while I'm not aware of any research that answers your question exactly, the answer is very clearly "yes".
rcurry 11y ago
Ah, getting mugged for your candy on Halloween - an annual tradition in my neighborhood.
protomyth 11y ago
Go over to this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10365463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10365463 and see how many people are calling walking with cash dangerous and foolish. It is mostly imagined given the CDC stats. I was a kid in the 70's and both of us were in much more danger than a kid today. Media has 24 hours to cover things today as opposed to an hour or two back in the day. We hear about everything today and ratings are made by scaring the crap out of us. Welcome to the shutin world for children.
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  I was definitely nervous when I sold my last car and was rolling around with $20k in my pocket. My brain knows the odds are very low, but my instinct knows the expected loss is very high. Those kind of risk are hard to evaluate.
  - wavefunction 11y ago
    It seems if you were selling a used car for $20k that you might have the forethought to request a cashier's check from a reputable bank. Easier in many ways than living with the terrible toll of worrying about walking around with 20k in your pocket...
    - protomyth 11y ago
      Well coldcode & sliverstorm, I guess you don't have to visit the other thread to see what I was talking about. Its almost as if crime had gone up instead of way down since the 60's and 70's, or everyone is really confident everyone else can avail themselves of all the financial instruments a bank offers.
    - sliverstorm 11y ago
      In general checks cannot be trusted, no matter the bank it claims to be from.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

jordigh 11y ago

I used to go out alone as a kid in Mexico City, but only within walking distance of my home. I was 12 the first time I rode public transportation on my own. Nothing ever happened to me, but within my social class it was seen as dangerous and unusual that my parents would let me ride the metro and peseros alone (I used to go to the most expensive private school in Mexico City).

coldtea 11y ago

Japanese? Kids all over the world walk to school alone. In places ranging from Spain to Singapore, including developing countries like Indonesia. I was around 9 or 10 when I started riding public transport. Tons of kids my age on the bus too.

tgb 11y ago
Even your list is missing the US and suggests that kids don't walk to school alone in the US. Distance was the only thing preventing me from walking to school alone as a kid, and I did bike home many days 4th-6th grades. The kids who lived close walked or biked almost every day from an even younger age, though the youngest would be accompanied.
- coldtea 11y ago
  >Even your list is missing the US and suggests that kids don't walk to school alone in the US. Not 100% familiar with schools in the US, but in old movies you could see kids walking to school in all suburban settings -- up until the mid-nineties or so. That or school buses. After that, in most movies there's a parent taking his kid(s) to school now (typically in a SUV), or the school bus.
  - nols 11y ago
    It's common for kids in the US to walk to school if the school is close enough. Sprawl means many children don't live within walking distance though.
  - tgb 11y ago
    It is common for parents to walk students to school or the bus stop. But walking alone is also common.
ekianjo 11y ago
This. This dumb article has just invented hot water. Seriously dont journalists do a bit of research before pushing posts?
11y ago

Mz 11y ago

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10320944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10320944

beloch 11y ago

Violent crime rates, including those against children, have continued to decline year over year in Western countries for a very long time now. It is now safer for children to be out alone at younger ages than ever before. The odd thing is that paranoia is at an all time high. Leaving a five-year-old unsupervised, even at home, is flirting with a visit from child protective services. There is less to protect children from than ever before, but parents are more protective than ever. It has reached the point that same are concerned that today's children aren't given enough freedom to experiment and fail. This is not by choice. It is enforced by society and law. Consider what would happen if you sent a three-year-old out on an errand as is done in Japan. A child that age, alone on the street, will attract attention, primarily of the concerned and meddling kind. The child will be asked where their parents are and promptly returned to them. The parents will be chewed out for reckless child endangerment as a bare minimum. While one can argue today's child-associated paranoia is a result of fear-mongering by the media, the real problem is that it's backed up by the law. Parents who are too trusting and permissive will soon find themselves in court. That has to change.

DanBC 11y ago
> Leaving a five-year-old unsupervised, even at home, is flirting with a visit from child protective services Most accidents happen in the home. Most people do a poor job of making their home safe for infants. (EG look at the number of people in the UK who buy socket covers but who don't bolt their TVs to the wall) Perhaps I misunderstand what you mean by "leave a 5 year old unsupervised" - does this mean "parent in the home but in different room"? Or "parent pops out to the local shop for half an hour"? Because five year old children are far too young to be left unsupervised for anything over short lengths of time, and if a parent is regularly doing that they probably need a chat from child protection social services.
- kuschku 11y ago
  A 5 year old child is old enough to go to a grocery store, buy stuff, and walk back home. I’ve done it, all my neighbors did it, and everyone I know has done it. Kids being at home for an hour or 2 at that age is no issue either. It’s not something special – everyone does it.

curiousjorge 11y ago

you can drop your wallet a hundred times and people in Korea and Japan will return it to you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWW4xzlrOWQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWW4xzlrOWQ I've heard reactions from Canadians who go to Korea or Japan and they are puzzled that nobody would steal, even if wallet was bulging with cash and the guy was passed out on the streets, he doesn't have to worry. To me this is the success of a homogenous neo-confucius brings order in society. Self reflection and honor prevents a cesspool of cultures ready to rip each others throats from forming. I ponder if Western societies can continue to function if they just keep letting anyone of any background and culture in especially when they choose not to integrate and shout 'racism' when they have to do something that requires the slightest bit of thinking and respect. Sometimes I look at my city, shootings, the violence, gangs, mental illnesses and ponder what life would've been like in Korea or Japan.

kuschku 11y ago
I’ll tell you a story that happened in a... well, not very good district of a German 300k people city. A district with 44% migrants, and 42% unemployed, and some of the highest crime rates of Germany. I was 18, it was the day after I finished my final high school exams, I had partied with a few girls, most went home, 2 of us – me and a friend – were trying to find a place to drink something. We ended up at some gas station, as all other stores were closed, and tried to buy alcohol. Some people were standing there, too, waiting in a queue, some of them migrants, some obviously homeless, some kinda nice dressed. A friend of mine tried to pay with her EC card, and was too drunk to use it or enter her PIN – so she asked if someone of the other crowd would be able to help her (I, myself, was also quite drunk). So she gave this guy her wallet, told him to "take out the yellow EC card, PIN is 2814"[1], and indeed, he did this. They – also wanting to buy alcohol – asked us if we wanted to follow them to a nearby party. We did, and ended up having a fun night playing singstar with them. -------------------------------- In Conclusion: It’s not ethnicity, or social class, or homogenity that leads or prevents crime. We’ve done similar things not once, but several times. And you know what? Never was anything stolen. Once I forgot a jacket, and couldn’t remember where anymore – next morning someone had posted the jacket onto a facebook group of the city with 60k users and I was able to get it back. -------------------------------- [1]: PIN changed for obvious reasons

mlvljr 11y ago

Was same in USSR for me (starting from the 1st grade, age 7) :)

trhway 11y ago
ditto. Both parents were working like the majority of the parents back then in the USSR, and there were no chance for them to get us to and from school. And outside of school, we were roaming streets and forest/seashore around the city completely on our own.

mianos 11y ago

The paranoia is commonly considered as a result of wider media coverage. Every single national and, often, international media covers most child abductions. This widening of coverage gives the, incorrect, impression that child abductions are on the rise. Statistics suggest they are falling rapidly in modern times. .. Citations are left as an exercise for the reader. Personally, I feel the lack of diligence on parents by parents in teaching children safety around roads is probably the last bastion of letting the little critters roam free. (Wait for the lights in all cases when with your children. Never walk behind cars, if in any way possible, stopped or moving.

pavornyoh 11y ago

This was posted and discussed at length on October 2nd here..https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10320944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10320944

saeranv 11y ago

"But small-scaled urban spaces and a culture of walking and transit use also foster safety and, perhaps just as important, the perception of safety." I thought of this while I was watching the video. Japanese suburban fabric is much more compact, fine grain, mixed-use and more spatially coherent than North American equivelents. These contribute to the'eyes on a street'[1] condition in which neighborhood stores and residences look out onto public streets and reinforce communal saftey. The cul-de-sacs and degenerate grids of North American suburbs not only make walking incredibly inefficient[2], but also increase the isolation and community-orientation of the streets. [1] Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities [2] http://urbankchoze.blogspot.ca/2014/10/bad-habits-of-north-american-cities_9.html http://urbankchoze.blogspot.ca/2014/10/bad-habits-of-north-a...

kailuowang 11y ago

I am from China, I go to school alone since 6. Most other kids do that since 7. That was some decades ago. Now I live in U.S. it has become unthinkable to me, mostly because the lack of gun control and the number of gun owners who are so ready to fire their weapons in public.

carsongross 11y ago

A strong, homogenous culture solves public trust problems (which are special cases of the prisoner's dillema problem.) Multiculturalism destroys social trust. America is the most culturally diverse western nation, ergo it has the lowest public trust. As America continues to diversify, and in as much as Europe does so, we can expect social trust to continue to decline. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Putnam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Putnam

jazzyk 11y ago
Not true. Many more things in the anglo-saxon culture (GB, US, Canada, Australia) are trust-based - your signature is usually good as gold, unlike continental Europe which requires tons of affidavits, ceremonial seals, additional paperwork, etc. All of the above anglo-saxon countries are multicultural. Continental Europe has been mostly homogeneous (until recently, but still).
- maus42 11y ago
  Nothing to say on the culture issue, but what are your experiences of continental Europe? This sounds more of a question how the bureaucracy works and its traditions. Doctors putting fancy papers with ceremonial seals on their walls sounds like a US popular TV thing, for example. Do they really do that?
- IkmoIkmo 11y ago
  > continental Europe which requires tons of affidavits, ceremonial seals, additional paperwork, etc. Like what and like where, specifically? (Dutch here, can't really confirm or come up with examples that'd match that). > All of the above anglo-saxon countries are multicultural. Continental Europe has been mostly homogeneous The generalisations are too broad, putting say France in the same category as Poland makes no sense. Canada/US/Australia are of course in a diversity category of their own as de facto lands of immigrants (although that overstates diversity, I think. Dutch and British heritage in Canada is a pretty meaningless difference nowadays as a proxy of heterogeneity of society), but I feel GB's diversity is pretty similar to various European countries. It's hard to make exact comparisons due to different data points. It seems outside of the anglo-saxon world, most governments (urged by sociologists) have let go of defining demographics in terms of 'race' (whatever that means) or skin color, but rather based on ethnicity or heritage. So in GB you get things like white and black and asian (with the latter data often split into India/Pakistani) and in the Netherlands or France you'll get things like 'parents both French born, one parent foreign born, parents both foreign born', with all kinds of splits for nationality. It's hard to compare but I feel GB's multiculturalism is pretty similar to say France or the Netherlands just to take an example.

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somberi 11y ago

In Manhattan I see bunch of kids in the subway going to their school on their own. They make the subway compartment so noisy I usually avoid it :)

rtz12 11y ago

Isn't that pretty normal? I walked to school alone my whole life. Walk to the bus stop, take the bus to school, walk to the school. Pretty usual.

mc32 11y ago

One thing the article failed to mention directly is the shared monoculture. Their culture is such that some aspects of it are observed by most people there. As they mention, young children are involved early on with community work. They also have instilled compliance from an early age --ever notice all the voice commands everywhere? In school, at the subway, at the combini, at the depato, at the escalator. It's pervasive and it results in a society homogenous in many aspects. Of course, there are dissidents and outcasts and otaku and non-conformists, but most observe core attitudes. I think this contributes to the way they can have a degree of dependability on others. That's not to say there aren't deviants and people who take advantage of the norms. But to borrow from their vocabulary, they are unique, in some ways, and I don't think it's transplantable.

Yabood 11y ago

I think its cultural thing, nothing more. All kids in Iraq and neighboring countries sent their kids to school alone. Public schools didn't have any transportation, so you pretty much had to walk to school regardless of where you lived. I was lucky that my school was only a mile away. Kids who had their parents walk them to school were made fun of, which is why I think its a cultural thing.

dripton 11y ago

I walked to kindergarten alone at age 5, in the US. In the 1970s, when there was much more crime than there is today. I mostly blame cable news for helicopter parenting. The data shows that there is much less violent crime than there was 40 years ago, but when something bad does happen and cable news jumps all over the story, it creates a false impression of the world being a very dangerous place.

jmadsen 11y ago

Interesting: I submitted this exact story a week or so ago - from a different website. Opening is word for word, different image. http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/09/why-are-little-kids-in-japan-so-independent/407590/ http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/09/why-are-little-kids-i... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10320944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10320944 I can't imagine The Atlantic steals stories; obviously, this must have been re-sold. Just interesting to see it.

dang 11y ago
Ah, thank you. I felt sure we'd had a big thread about it before, but couldn't find it earlier. Citylab is a project of the Atlantic, btw. We've been seeing more of this cross-publishing lately, without links back to originals. I fear it will move the needle towards more dupes on HN (actual dupes, where we've already had a significant thread about the story in the last year or so).
- jmadsen 11y ago
  "Citylab is a project of the Atlantic" Didn't know that - was surprised the author would have rights to resell his work, and in such a short timespan. That explains!

seesomesense 11y ago

Young children walking to school is common here in Australia. It is not considered the slightest bit newsworthy. I live opposite a primary school. Everyday I see children who must be 6 or 7 years old walk to it. I guess that it is all to do with the level of criminality in the general community. The USA does have a homicide rate and a violent crime rate that is significantly higher than than of many other rich nations.