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As others have said, in Europe (at least in the cities where I grew up) transportation is not an issue. I went to several schools and kids being driven to scho

As others have said, in Europe (at least in the cities where I grew up) transportation is not an issue. I went to several schools and kids being driven to school has always been an exception. They mostly walked or took public transport [0]. My sister went to high-school in a more rural area (read far-away suburb) and kids from the surrounding towns used to take the school bus. Yet, school still started very early, a little past 8:00 AM. I absolutely loathed having to get up so early in the morning (7-ish) and used to be half asleep for the first few periods. While US issues around transportation certainly don't help, there must be something else going on with the school schedules since they seem to be roughly the same in areas where transportation is not an issue. --- [0] I know there were exceptions for kids living far away, I was one of them since we moved during high-school, but I didn't change schools. However, this is absolutely not the norm where I grew up.

AmericanChopper 5y ago
> As others have said, in Europe (at least in the cities where I grew up) transportation is not an issue. Having spent many hours on the Parisian metro, there’s no chance I’d let my children anywhere near it. Even supervised.
- laurencerowe 5y ago
  Anywhere you have enough density for a metro local schools are going to be within walking distance.
  - AmericanChopper 5y ago
    Ah yes. The Parisian streets. Much safer.
    - gpvos 5y ago
      What would be your solution? I hope not the car, that ruins children's self-reliance and is generally to be avoided. Also clutters the streets.
      - Muromec 5y ago
- ivegotnoaccount 5y ago
  Lived in paris for ~23 years, and took public transports to go to school everyday starting from secondary school (~11 years old). Same was going for my siblings, and a huge part of my classmates, including those that needed to take the RER. The metro can be unsafe at night, but usually not at times where children commute.
Merem 5y ago
Growing up in the countryside, basically no kid was driven to elementary school, except maybe some first graders early on. You either walk, come by bicycle or take a bus. I wouldn't call 8:00 "very early". Elementary school started 7:25 for me, "Gymnasium" 7:20. Didn't really have a problem with it, same with my classmates. If you keep a decent sleeping schedule, don't play games on some device right before bed or laze about all day, it's a non-issue under normal circumstances.
- jlg23 5y ago
  > If you keep a decent sleeping schedule The natural shift of the sleep cycle towards later hours during puberty is exactly the topic. I would consider myself to be the textbook example: zombiesque in school until 10am, now, 25 years later, I naturally wake up at 6am.
  - Merem 5y ago
    Is that actually a thing though? When I got my own TV, I usually went to bed at ~22:15 because that is when the first evening movie ended. And that was before and after puberty. Eventually, at age 17, I found something I really wanted to watch which aired from 22:00 to 0:00, so that's how long I stayed awake. It had nothing to do with my body. Similarly, talking with classmates, I noticed that girls went to bed earlier (like around 21:00) and that was most likely because there wasn't anything interesting for them to do at later hours, while we boys either watched TV or played games. Almost all the boys quit around 22:00 which would make it a very healthy 8 hour sleep until they got up again. And that is aside from being physically active during the day which makes sleeping in rather simple. Of course, if you sit on your bum all the day, sleeping in does become more difficult as there is little physical exhaustion.
xondono 5y ago
> As others have said, in Europe (at least in the cities where I grew up) transportation is not an issue. Clearly you didn’t grew in Barcelona, or Paris, or London, … Back when I had a car commute for work I could tell the day the school summer holidays begin just by how much it took me to get to work.
- ivegotnoaccount 5y ago
  Isn't it more that parents often take vacations when their children have their, thus less congestion ? At least in Paris itself, only a third of homes have cars, and in this third, not everyone is going to bring its children to school using it.
  - xondono 5y ago
    Not really, here school ends up at a given date (it’s generally around the 20th of June). It doesn’t matter if it’s Tuesday, and most parents will be still working until August.
- morsch 5y ago
  In Paris or London, kids are not given a ride to school for a lack of alternatives. No personal experience with Barcelona, but the public transport network looks pretty good, too. Of course, public transport shouldn't be necessary for most city kids, which ought to have a school in walking and certainly biking[1] distance. It'd be interesting to see the distribution of distance to school in different locations and for different years. Increases in suburbanization are bound to increase the average distance to school; but rural kids even in my generation and more so in my parents and grandparents generation managed much longer commutes without a car as a matter of course. [1] Maybe kids use the bike less since there's a perception that it's gotten more dangerous. A perception that's not totally wrong, at least in Germany: the number of bike accidents has increased from ~74k in 2000 to 87k in 2019[2], though at least the number of fatal accidents decreased in the same time. [2] Table 1.1 https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Verkehrsunfaelle/Publikationen/Downloads-Verkehrsunfaelle/unfaelle-zweirad-5462408197004.pdf?__blob=publicationFile https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Verkeh...
GordonS 5y ago
Surely it depends on the size of the city/town/village? I grew up in a small village in rural Scotland, and there was exactly one bus a day to/from School. If I missed it, I had a 5 mile walk to get there. I got a bike at some point, but twisty rural roads were not the safest place to be riding.

AmericanChopper 5y ago

> As others have said, in Europe (at least in the cities where I grew up) transportation is not an issue. Having spent many hours on the Parisian metro, there’s no chance I’d let my children anywhere near it. Even supervised.

laurencerowe 5y ago
Anywhere you have enough density for a metro local schools are going to be within walking distance.
- AmericanChopper 5y ago
  Ah yes. The Parisian streets. Much safer.
  - gpvos 5y ago
    What would be your solution? I hope not the car, that ruins children's self-reliance and is generally to be avoided. Also clutters the streets.
    - Muromec 5y ago
ivegotnoaccount 5y ago
Lived in paris for ~23 years, and took public transports to go to school everyday starting from secondary school (~11 years old). Same was going for my siblings, and a huge part of my classmates, including those that needed to take the RER. The metro can be unsafe at night, but usually not at times where children commute.

Merem 5y ago

Growing up in the countryside, basically no kid was driven to elementary school, except maybe some first graders early on. You either walk, come by bicycle or take a bus. I wouldn't call 8:00 "very early". Elementary school started 7:25 for me, "Gymnasium" 7:20. Didn't really have a problem with it, same with my classmates. If you keep a decent sleeping schedule, don't play games on some device right before bed or laze about all day, it's a non-issue under normal circumstances.

jlg23 5y ago
> If you keep a decent sleeping schedule The natural shift of the sleep cycle towards later hours during puberty is exactly the topic. I would consider myself to be the textbook example: zombiesque in school until 10am, now, 25 years later, I naturally wake up at 6am.
- Merem 5y ago
  Is that actually a thing though? When I got my own TV, I usually went to bed at ~22:15 because that is when the first evening movie ended. And that was before and after puberty. Eventually, at age 17, I found something I really wanted to watch which aired from 22:00 to 0:00, so that's how long I stayed awake. It had nothing to do with my body. Similarly, talking with classmates, I noticed that girls went to bed earlier (like around 21:00) and that was most likely because there wasn't anything interesting for them to do at later hours, while we boys either watched TV or played games. Almost all the boys quit around 22:00 which would make it a very healthy 8 hour sleep until they got up again. And that is aside from being physically active during the day which makes sleeping in rather simple. Of course, if you sit on your bum all the day, sleeping in does become more difficult as there is little physical exhaustion.

xondono 5y ago

> As others have said, in Europe (at least in the cities where I grew up) transportation is not an issue. Clearly you didn’t grew in Barcelona, or Paris, or London, … Back when I had a car commute for work I could tell the day the school summer holidays begin just by how much it took me to get to work.

ivegotnoaccount 5y ago
Isn't it more that parents often take vacations when their children have their, thus less congestion ? At least in Paris itself, only a third of homes have cars, and in this third, not everyone is going to bring its children to school using it.
- xondono 5y ago
  Not really, here school ends up at a given date (it’s generally around the 20th of June). It doesn’t matter if it’s Tuesday, and most parents will be still working until August.
morsch 5y ago
In Paris or London, kids are not given a ride to school for a lack of alternatives. No personal experience with Barcelona, but the public transport network looks pretty good, too. Of course, public transport shouldn't be necessary for most city kids, which ought to have a school in walking and certainly biking[1] distance. It'd be interesting to see the distribution of distance to school in different locations and for different years. Increases in suburbanization are bound to increase the average distance to school; but rural kids even in my generation and more so in my parents and grandparents generation managed much longer commutes without a car as a matter of course. [1] Maybe kids use the bike less since there's a perception that it's gotten more dangerous. A perception that's not totally wrong, at least in Germany: the number of bike accidents has increased from ~74k in 2000 to 87k in 2019[2], though at least the number of fatal accidents decreased in the same time. [2] Table 1.1 https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Verkehrsunfaelle/Publikationen/Downloads-Verkehrsunfaelle/unfaelle-zweirad-5462408197004.pdf?__blob=publicationFile https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Verkeh...

GordonS 5y ago

Surely it depends on the size of the city/town/village? I grew up in a small village in rural Scotland, and there was exactly one bus a day to/from School. If I missed it, I had a 5 mile walk to get there. I got a bike at some point, but twisty rural roads were not the safest place to be riding.