This is exactly why. We've been at our administrators for years and the response always is "the bus routes" but in reality it's because of the sports schedules.
High school sports is a drain on the educational system, plain and simple. It lacks equity - an disproportionate amount of money is spent on very few children. The football coach in our HS has a Vice Principal title, so he doesn't have to teach classes but knocks down $100K+ to run the team. There are maybe 120 kids in the football program, in a high school of 2000.
If you look at Europe, sports clubs are run by outside groups and happen after school on their own resources. I'd love to see that here. I mean, we do have year-round club teams and that's another problem. Too many parents overload their kids with sports either because they're living through their kids, or they think it's a shot at a college scholarship. It burns the kids out and rarely turns into anything profitable.
After reading all of these I still think it's "the bus routes", or more generally speaking, "the commuting".
I grew up in an asian country and my parents never picked me up after I was 10. I just took buses from home to school and then from school to home. I'm not saying our system is better than the US, but it's a bit of culture shock that everyone commutes in their (parents') cars there.
I think there are 2 different things being discussed here:
1. Commuting via school bus vs. parents' cars
2. Commuting via public bus
In the US, at least for the first 25 years of my life, most people I knew got to school by school bus unless they lived within walking distance or were old enough to drive themselves. Some kids parents would drive them, but it usually was either due to it being too cold to walk (or wait for the bus), a special occasion where they needed to bring in some large or fragile object for a project, or them being in an unincorporated part of the town that the school busses didn't serve. (I think this was fairly rare.) Since I don't have kids of my own, I don't know how it's changed in the last 25 years, but I still see school busses all over my current city (Los Angeles), so they're still a thing.
Where I grew up in a rural part of the MidWest, there were no public buses. Our town was too small for them to run efficiently.
I lived in a not-too-rural city in the Midwest of about 40,000 at the time, and we still didn’t have school busing for anyone in the city. It was only for rural folks.
I was forced to get my drivers’ license at 16 to drive 10 min to school because the alternative was walking 1.2 hours every morning one way ti get to school… meaning leaving the house at around 6:00am.
The city had no city bus, so there was zero public transit option.
Most parts of the U.S. are not well designed for bikes or pedestrians, only cars. Also, many schools in the U.S. have really large districts, so some students live really far from the school.
In many places this would mean children would be required to bike on 55mph+ 5-lane roads with no shoulder and no bike lane for 5-20+ miles.
Nearly all public schools in the U.S. provide a free bus system for all students for this reason.
This was me in elementary school. I went to a private school briefly where there wasn’t a bus and my mother had to work so I had to bike 20 miles to school through rush hour traffic at 11 years old.
That was the weird part about our city: they simply did not offer it.
Literally every family was expected to have a car, and get their child to school in a car... or somehow have them walk, but apparently not too far, since temperatures would routinely dip to single digits Fahrenheit throughout the winter months.
Quite possibly not. It is reasonably safe only if infrastructure allows it. Biking on a major road where a bunch of teenagers drives the car is neither healthy nor safe.
I rode a bike on our quiet neighborhood streets when I was about 12. I was returning a rented video game back to the store. I generally stayed to the side of the main lane, where cars are typically parked on the street. However, in one area, cars were parked, so I had to go around them.
In spite of me going slowly, and not making any kind of darting move - I gradually moved over and looked over my shoulder for many seconds before I came towards the parked cars - someone behind me yelled a curse word at me as they passed me and flipped me off.
I had the sheer audacity of riding a bike on a street.
# # #
Sidewalks are not really intended for riding bikes, but that was the only place I felt somewhat safe riding them, other than the dedicated walking and bike paths that stretched around the outside of our city and did not get to within half a mile of my high school.
And riding a bike as a 16 year old from December 1 - March 15 through likely multiple inches of snow on the ground, and certainly on icy conditions? No way. The big puffy tires that are somewhat popular today in winter were something I hadn't even heard of in the 1990s.
Edit: and as other commenters mentioned, no bike lanes. Bike lanes on a road in that city were not present until 2012, many years after I was in high school, and even now are being questioned by the mayor of the city: https://www.kfyrtv.com/2022/05/30/safe-biking-routes-bismarc...
So... no, it was not an option. If I had suggested it, my parents, friends, classmates, and teachers would likely all have tried to talk me out of it.
AFAIK this has a lot to do with cul-de-sac / suburbia development, combined with the US's chronic non-investment in public transit, combined with the comparative perceived-and-real safety levels.
AKA -
You literally can't take buses from school to home in most cases, and when you can, they're probably way to sketchy for kids to do.
At the same time, the kids in my neighborhood are bused to school. The school is a mile away with zero road crossings (one short pedestrian tunnel). The rest is walking paths. Parents and kids sit in the idling cars at the edge of the neighborhood waiting for the bus. They could just about walk to school in that waiting time.
Having children use it — which covers the whole range of society in every demographic except age — might help keep it safer. It in parents' interest to keep it safe and useful.
I commute to work most days on the bus in Washington, DC, and depending on the hour of the morning will see unaccompanied school children, admittedly more from middle-school age up.
Way to shoot down an argument nobody was making. OP referred to safe, which Baltimore isn't, and yet kids take the public buses as the primary transit to and from school all over the city for the past several decades.
GP doesn't have any idea what he's talking about; he's clearly just fallen for the right-wing propaganda that puts Baltimore at the center of American ills, a la Chicago. Baltimore's public transit is quite decent, between busses and light rail, and (particularly downtown) its identity as a colonial city makes it hell for driving - which, consequently, makes it that much more pleasant to walk/bike. It could become even better, now that we no longer have a certain gubernatorial impediment. The only thing he has close to correct is the safety issue, but it's not like the entire city is a warzone. Rather, it varies block-by-block, and even then, I caution againt exaggeration. Certain people feel accosted by the ever-present window washers, while I can't remember ever feeling unsafe the dozens of times I was set loose as a kid for school trips or visited for Otakon.
I grew up in a part of the US and I think by second grade my older brother probably 10 was walking us all back to our grandparents house which was like 10 minutes from the school.
Never commuted on a car or took buses since there were none. Just my town had the houses near the schools. I know now is worse because a lot of the schools have been consolidated into megaschools so I'm assuming this generation drives a ton more.
Private sports outside of school are too expensive for all but the well-off families. School sports are basically free for the participants, and they are good for kids' social development and physical health. Sports keeps many kids in high school, certainly if my oldest hadn't had cross-country and track he probably would have dropped out.
That's another difference between Europe and the US. When I grew up in Germany there was a huge amount of sports available that were taught by volunteers. Soccer, judo, karate all for free even in the rural area I grew up in. I wonder if it's possible because everyone isn't constantly threatened by looming bankruptcy if they don't save big piles of cash.
The parent comment was a little misleading. In the US there is a ton of sports available for every student to join. Really the only people who don't play sports are those who don't want to.
Correct. I used to coach youth sports. There were waivers and “scholarships” available. Equipment was provided by the club (this was football and basketball). Coaches and other parents did the transport.
Also if you get injured playing sports, you could bankrupt your family. Maybe they have enough savings to cover the deductible for the year. Too bad Football is a winter sport and you could just as easily have hospital bills that cross over into the new year.
Sorry if it's an ignorant question since my kid hasn't reached sports age yet. But athleticism doesn't seem like it should be an optional choice that detracts from other educational resources. Why not make it mandatory, 1h a day for everyone? Saves on travel, saves on transition time, saves on economy of scale and it's more equitable since everyone pays through taxes and everyone benefits in the short term (more parents in the workforce, less cost on nannies, take-out food etc) and in the long term (lower health care cost into adult age). People with differences in physical abilities are surly better cared for with pooled resources than planning for exercise individually.
I think most schools have physical education, which is pretty much just mandatory exercises. After-school sports are more about culture and competition then exercise. Not everyone is competitive, and it could be really damaging for some kids to be forced into a competitive environment they don’t enjoy. It is much better to allow kids to choose whether they would rather participate in other non-competitive cultural activities after school (such as the theater, hacking, anime drawing, gardening, or whatever)
Generally everyone has to take gym class. Sports are additional. Teams are competitive to get into and different kids will specialize in different ones depending on their strengths and interests. Some schools do require every student to choose at least one sport. There are other extracurriculars such as drama, speech & debate, and special choirs or chamber orchestras that may or may not be compatible with different sports.
In England, we had a short "physical education" class once a week. That varied between gymnastics, swimming, badminton, indoor cricket, athletics, and occasionally other indoor-ish things.
We also had an afternoon ice a week of "games", which was football, rugby, hockey, cricket, softball or similar. Longer, always outdoor sports.
(This will probably vary within England, I don't think I've ever asked other people what they did.)
It depended on the season: touch football and soccer in the fall, basketball and wresting in the winter, softball and running in the spring. There would be also calisthenics--push-up, sit-ups, jumping jacks, occasionally burpees. And their would be drills such as "touchlines"--running on the basketball court.
It has been fifty years, but I think that PE was twice a week. Class was about an hour.
At least when I was in high school in the early 10's, gym class was about 3 hours per week. We mostly stayed in the gym. This was Texas however. It could be up to 100 degrees until October. Running was not required. Sweating wasn't really required for an A+ as evidenced by some girls in the class. It was a checkbox for the state mandated requirements.
gym class = physical education. In the US it's similar as in various sports and running but one funny thing is almost everyone has to learn square dancing.
If only. I think the social dynamic around mandatory sports in school basically ensures that some 70% of kids are turned off from any kind of sports at an early age. If you want athleticism (or really just healthy habits desperately needed in our chair-fixated lifestyles) you probably need to practice it with them yourself.
PE is a good example because different people have different physiology and will respond better or worse to different exercise schedules.
As an adult, people are so varied. The concept of forcing kids, who absolutely are as or more varied than their adults, into so much structure is cruel. I get that some people are lazy and without something telling them what to do they will happily fail. But school today is more about grinding then down than building them up. And they bully and harass each other as consequence.
In Europe these clubs are often community or publicly funded. If they charge partition fees, you’ll often find municipalities subsidizing them heavily making them effectively free for kids and parents. Now there is still some problems with this system (in particular overemphasis on sports over other cultural activities such as theater, music, etc.)
> The football coach in our HS has a Vice Principal title, so he doesn't have to teach classes but knocks down $100K+ to run the team
Presumably being Vice Principal carries other responsibilities beyond just coaching football. For perspective, the Vice Principal at my high school didn’t teach classes OR coach any sports - being Vice Principal is a full-time position on its own. And this was in a school with far fewer than 2000 students.
I'll bet your vice principal could teach classes, and used to teach classes before being promoted. They may even do so occasionally, if a teacher is unexpectedly sick. My school's vice principal taught two class, so about 4 hours a week IIRC.
I'll also bet that's unlikely to be the case for the football coach.
While students need somewhere to sleep and eat, the cost of doing so on campus are much higher than anywhere else (in my limited experience). For example, the cost of on-campus room and board my junior year was 4x the cost of my off-campus room and board the following year. Some schools don't allow for off-campus housing for some or all students, or still require commuters to purchase a meal plan. So perhaps while it's not sensible to include all room and board costs with the cost of college, it's definitely fair to include some or even most.
Non big city schools aren’t a 4x multiple or even 2x. And most schools aren’t in New England.
And most schools don’t require dorming, especially for all 3/4 years. The average student loan debt for a graduating undergrad is 23k. If college costs were truly 100k that just wouldn’t be the case.
Obviously I didn't go to most schools. But none I attended were in a big city, and none were in New England, so it's not just a "big city" or "New England" problem. Regardless, I have never personally seen an example of on-campus room and board being <= off-campus room and board.
> The [median] student loan debt for a graduating undergrad is 23k. If college costs were truly 100k that just wouldn’t be the case.
I fail to see how that necessarily follows because:
- many students and families save for college, so there's a cash downpayment
- many students work to cover part of college costs
- many families work to cover part of college costs
But this seems an unproductive rabbit trail from the issue of letting kids get their sleep.
I used to be in two team sports on the same season, theater, chess and computer club in high school and mid school.
Day looked like this wake up at 5:30. Be gross and just brush my teeth and walk to school. Do sport 1 from 6:00 to 7:30 shower and eat food from bag. While entering class at 7:50.
School day ended 2:15 alternating clubs different days (theatre, chess , computer)
3:30 sport 2 till 5:00pm
Walk back home.
I didn't play sports the other season so mostly just play Magic with other folks when sports was supposed to be there.
We also had theatre or music has an elective class. But club did better parts.
Not where I grew up. Sports teams, theater and music programs were all funded equally. All extracurriculars came with fees and fundraisers. One of the gym teachers, also the basketball coach, was useless if the team was likely to make a playoff run. One of the English teachers, the theater director, was equally useless during the weeks leading up to a performance.
I thought the GGP was being unfair to athletics. Scholastic athletics are a necessary outlet for a lot of kids, as are theater and music. If you are going to do away with one of them, do away with all of it.
Maybe in certain areas of the USA (Texas, the deep south) you get an excess of public money going to athletics, in which case GGP has a valid point. But that wasn't my experience.
And in a country where 69% of adults are overweight, and 36% are obese [1], I would like to see even more emphasis on physical education (including after-school sports) rather than less.
I've come to see obesity and our production of elite athletes as two sides of the same coin.
When I was in high school my baseball and football practices were 2-3 hours long and I would be exhausted and wheezing by the end of them. I have a knee injury from freshman year that still bothers me 20 years later. That's an insane time and energy commitment, I see why a lot of kids end up doing nothing.
I'd like to see more options that are lower intensity, don't require a commitment, and meet kids where they're at fitness level-wise.
I agree that the emphasis should be more on increasing participation rather than producing elite athletes - at least in public schools. I went out for football my freshman year and the practices were just way too intense/violent for me, and I eventually ended up getting injured and quitting. That experience pretty much turned me off from school sports for good.
If my school offered boys' badminton or volleyball (there were girls' teams but not boys), I could totally see myself as enjoying those sports.
Football and baseball are tricky cases because it takes a lot to get 11 players to work in anything like unison and if someone like the left offensive tackle (for a right-handed quarterback) forgets their job or is incompetent it's quite dangerous.
In baseball, the very basic skill of hitting is just hard to accomplish. It takes a lot of practice hours to get the bare minimum of competency.
But I think these are two very important cultural games and I would be sad if they weren't played in public schools, it would be a real loss.
So once again we face a problem and I really don't know what the solution is.
Fair point about diet contributing more to obesity than exercise. And I am 100% on board with making school lunches healtier, and teaching kids about the importance of nutrition.
But exercise is also important for managing weight [1], and preventing/managing chronic disease [2]. And only about a quarter of adults in the US meet the HHS' activity guidelines [3].
What about building schools closer to population centers and provide pedestrian and bike infrastructure to it from nearby residential areas, such that kids could safely walk or bike to and from school?
Its sleep everyone needs. Lack of sleep which is culturally forced onto a group of people with things like school hours, college hours, office hours, shift work, is the fastest most consistently subtle way to ruin people's health and keep them in check.
You'd be surprised at how many people lose weight just by sleeping better.
When was the last time you jumped out of bed with a spring in your step?
There is also such a thing as diet induced obesity.
In North America, due to its vastness, everyone has drive somewhere, how on earth can people get their exercise if they are driving everywhere? Europe, is compact enough so that people can walk and get stuff, but the food legislation will play its part in creating obesity.
> sports clubs are run by outside groups and happen after school on their own resources
I'm sorry, I don't get your argument here... in your first sentence you say school sports harms equity, but then you advocate for private sports clubs - which in my poor district would mean a whole lot of kids not able to participate without the publicly-provided funding of those public school activities. School sports, music, theater, etc is the equity that wouldn't be otherwise available if we all moved to privatized education, clubs, etc. Which is not to say if those clubs are available in your community and you can afford them, good for you and your kids.
High school sports is a drain on the educational system, plain and simple. It lacks equity - an disproportionate amount of money is spent on very few children. The football coach in our HS has a Vice Principal title, so he doesn't have to teach classes but knocks down $100K+ to run the team. There are maybe 120 kids in the football program, in a high school of 2000.
If you look at Europe, sports clubs are run by outside groups and happen after school on their own resources. I'd love to see that here. I mean, we do have year-round club teams and that's another problem. Too many parents overload their kids with sports either because they're living through their kids, or they think it's a shot at a college scholarship. It burns the kids out and rarely turns into anything profitable.