Dear Editor:
I have lived across the (narrow, residential) street from a New Westminster public elementary school for 30 years. These past few years have seen a marked shift in social norms around the operation of the school, particularly on behalf of parents. Every day now, at drop-off and pick-up times, dozens of parents jockey up and down the street in their vehicles as they ferry their perfectly healthy children to and from the school’s front door. It is, to put it mildly, a recklessly dangerous and wilfully selfish vehicular rodeo of adults who clearly have no respect for civic rules, much less the safety of young children. They speed, honk, gun their engines, drive over curbs, back up onto the school lawns, park in handicapped spots and no parking zones, and line up down the block, idling, like so many limos picking up baby celebrities. One mother routinely stops her van in the middle of the street, turns it off and escorts her daughter — who is clearly old enough to walk on her own — to her classroom, thereby blocking traffic both ways. It is a minor miracle that no one has been hurt, although recently a bus did back into a resident’s car. Attempt to educate them and you can expect blank stares, flipped middle fingers and cursing.
I am sure this scenario plays out all over the city. Since when do children need to be escorted to school? Why don’t parents talk to their children about street safety, and drop them off at the end of the street and let them walk the 200 yards across the playground to their class? Watch if you have to, but set them free. Why do so many parents blithely ignore the signs and rules of the road while behind the wheel, thus teaching their offspring that rules only apply to others?
And when did parenting become an exercise in sheltering human snowflakes, instead of preparing the next generation to become independent, courteous, civic-minded young adults.
It’s also puzzling why so many parents routinely drop their children off after the 9 a.m. bell. Here’s a tip: get up earlier so that you’re not late. And teach your children that school matters, that disruptions to others are not cool, and that lateness is an unseemly, self-absorbed, easily avoided habit.
And the litter. Oh, the litter. Not needles and drug paraphernalia, mind you, but Slurpee cups and potato chip bags and candy bar wrappers. It's everywhere around the school, dropped by the children of fast food nation who clearly have not been taught that littering is not only ignorant and illegal but socially unacceptable. Every day, dozens of children, staffers and parents walk by the trash on the ground and ignore it, as if keeping their immediate environment clean is someone else’’s responsibility.
Parents, get a grip. You are failing your kids.
Shelley Fralic, New Westminster
