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06/24/2007: "Losing our Freedom, One Generation at a Time"
listening to: FM 90.7 -- Andrews University -- Classical
How children lost the right to roam in four generations | the Daily Mail
When George Thomas was eight he walked everywhere.
It was 1926 and his parents were unable to afford the fare for a tram, let alone the cost of a bike and he regularly walked six miles to his favourite fishing haunt without adult supervision.
Fast forward to 2007 and Mr Thomas's eight-year-old great-grandson Edward enjoys none of that freedom.
He is driven the few minutes to school, is taken by car to a safe place to ride his bike and can roam no more than 300 yards from home.
Although this article is written about a family living in London, there are no differences to life here in America.
When I was a kid, I roamed the countryside on my bicycle, even riding into the next county. I even rode on State Highway 14 from Akron to Rochester in 1982 to buy Asia's debut album. I was younger than Dylan was at that time.
And now, we are just now letting Dylan ride his bike fifteen minutes to his school. Our paranoia has taken over our sensibilties, and we are smothering our children. Now, it's one thing to let your kids explore versus letting them run wild. But I see how we have clamped down upon what he does versus what we did as kids in the 1970's and 1980's. Perhaps it would be different if we lived in a rural area such as my hometown. If you have visited both St. Joseph and Akron, you know there are fundamental differences.