Why Japanese Kids Can Walk to School Alone

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/10/why-japanese-kids-can-walk-to-school-alone/408475/?single_page=true

by idoco • 11 years ago

71 101 11 years ago

theatlantic.com

zanethomas• 11 years 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• 11 years 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• 11 years 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.

kuschku13• 11 years 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• 11 years ago

+1 Its the same in Finland. Now my kids walk to school every day.

Lazare• 11 years 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".

rcurry2• 11 years ago

Ah, getting mugged for your candy on Halloween - an annual tradition in my neighborhood.

protomyth2• 11 years ago

Go over to this thread 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.

sliverstorm2• 11 years 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.

jordigh• 11 years 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).

coldtea2• 11 years 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.

tgb2• 11 years 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.

coldtea2• 11 years 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.

ekianjo• 11 years ago

This. This dumb article has just invented hot water. Seriously dont journalists do a bit of research before pushing posts?

tmalsburg2• 11 years ago

Right, this articles makes it appear as if Japan was the outlier but the truth is that the US is. I grew up in a mid-size town in Germany and all children went to school on their own starting from age 6. We spent the whole day playing outside roaming the city and surrounding forests and our parents did not care at all. It was completely normal. A year ago I moved to California and my wife and I were shocked to see how paranoid American parents are. We live in a perfectly calm and peaceful residential neighborhood but never see children play on the streets or in the park around the corner. Some people do not even allow their children to play in the garden because of germs and "dangerous" animals and whatnot.

kailuowang2• 11 years ago

this articles makes it appear as if Japan was the outlier but the truth is that the US is

This is a typical U.S. center mentality. US is an outlier in many aspects in day-to-day life. And when American travels abroad they deem many difference they encountered as exotic things unique to that place. I heard an American tourist comment when an Italian restaurant heated the milk before serving her child - "what an interesting Italian tradition", well, people all over the world avoid giving their children milk of fridge temperature.

mahranch2• 11 years ago

this articles makes it appear as if Japan was the outlier but the truth is that the US is.

I think what makes Japan the outlier is their shockingly low violent crime rate, crime rate against children (abductions, etc) and one of the lowest drug use in first world countries.

I remember during the 80s, one of the big things being pushed for by politicians was a low crime rate and low drug use (same time D.A.R.E came into the world). Looks like Japan discovered that utopia. Japan certainly has it's cultural problems (which country doesn't?) but I'd love to have their problems instead of our own. It would be nice to be worrying about working 12 hour days instead of worrying about being shot on my way to work every day (last year, a bullet ricocheted of the concrete near me kicking up a piece or a rock which hit me in my leg, requiring stitches).

IkmoIkmo2• 11 years ago

Agreed. Netherlands here, definitely went to school, sports and friends by myself before age 10, not sure how you exactly. Can recall getting lost once for hours when I cycled back from a friend who lived about 30 minutes away from my home after declining their parents' offer to drive me home, but after an hour or two I found my way back. If I had to go somewhere that was far away from home that I'd never been before I'd usually be accompanied, but to cycle the same route to school or football practice every day with my parents beyond age 8 or so? No way.

Mz• 11 years ago

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

beloch• 11 years 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.

DanBC6• 11 years 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.

kuschku13• 11 years 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.

brg• 11 years ago

Most accidents happen at home for the same reason most auto accidents happen within three miles of home; that's were we are most of the time.

guard-of-terra2• 11 years ago

Did "child protection social services" bear this child? Did they feed this child? Did then nourish with this child? Did they play with this child? Did they buy this child clothes?

Why should then we ever hear any kind of chatter from them?

emgoldstein5• 11 years ago

According to free-range child advocate Lenore Skenazy, there are a little over 100 stranger abductions per year in the US. [1]. Therefore, abductions are a not a big deal.

According to Wikipedia, 100 years ago, there were about 100 lynchings per year in the US. [2] Therefore, lynching is a big deal.

I love this meme about the media. Quick question: for you, personally, when was the last time you saw a media story about an abducted child? When was the last time you saw a media story about paranoid helicopter parents, etc, repeating the ideas you see above? In my experience, the ratio is 1:10 if not 1:20.

There's a very straightforward reason why parents keep their kids indoors: the same parents, while outdoors, regularly encounter human beings that they wouldn't trust their kids around. Deinstitutionalization anyone? Free-range mental patients or free-range children: pick one. [3]

[1] http://www.freerangekids.com/over-700-children-are-abducted-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_psychiatric_institu...

DanBC6• 11 years ago

Deinstitutionalization anyone? Free-range mental patients

Perinatal mental illness is a significant cause of death of women - in the UK suicide is the third leading cause of perinatal death.

Many women experience mental illness during or after pregnancy. Ignorant, stigmatising views like yours about mental illness make it harder for women to seek help for their mental health problems.

And your wider point is wrong. There's no evidence that people with a mental illness pose a risk of harm to other people or to children.

https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/pdf/perinatal_web.pdf

Rates of perinatal mental health problems

post-partum psychosis is about 2 women per 1,000 maternities;

chronic serious MI is 2:1000;

severe depressive illness 30:1000;

mild-moderate depressive illness and anxiety state 100-150:1000;

PTSD 30:1000;

adjustment disorders and distress 150:1000

deciplex2• 11 years ago

Well, they're not exactly locking up people with mental problems and throwing away the key in Japan, either. They take the trains like anyone else, and yes that includes people talking loudly to themselves or occasionally shouting for no reason.

codingdave2• 11 years ago

The laws vary by jurisdiction. Many parents that I know believe it is illegal to leave a child alone if they are under 12. Maybe it is in some locations, but not where I live. In my state and town, there is no statutory definition of when a child can be left alone. However, there are explicit warning that negligent decisions can result in other charges.

And I think that is completely fair - some towns are safer than others, some children are more self sufficient than others, and every parent needs to make their own decisions. Hopefully educated and wise decisions.

rdtsc• 11 years ago

is flirting with a visit from child protective services.

No doubt. Co-worker let kids (probably 5-6 years old), play outside, in a cul-de-sac. While they were inside watching. Sure enough, anonymous neighbor called cops. CPS and cops got involved. Embarasing calls at work, monitoring from CPS (regular visits to "check" on them for a period of time), headaches, lost time.

Heck, the neighbor might have just not liked the color of their lawn and they knew that calling CPS and cops about kids will ensure maximum punishment for minimum risk to them ("Hey, I was just thinking about the safety of the children").

Once those in power act irrationally about anything. That will always be exploited. It was exploited many years ago in the Soviet Union. Neighbors would have spats about goats eating grass on the wrong side of the fence. Then one of them would denounce the others as "enemies of the people" and bam! family sent to Siberia in no time.

josephagoss• 11 years ago

I do not trust child protection services, they mean well but they overuse their power on a 'feeling' and worse, 'career advancement'.

My family was completely ripped apart and destroyed by the child protection services in the UK.

guard-of-terra2• 11 years ago

When I hear stories like this I strongly feel we all should stop having children altogether.

sampo• 11 years ago

the neighbor might have just not liked the color of their lawn

Or maybe he was annoyed the the noise of kids playing outside. (I am not saying kids shouldn't play outside, just speculating on the motivation.)

rayiner• 11 years ago

I love being a parent. But I am beginning to intensely dislike other parents in my generation. I grew up with overprotective asian parents, but American millennial parents are a whole level of crazy above that.

abalashov• 11 years ago

We emigrated to the US when I was 6, and I started school a few days after our arrival. My parents were graduate students and we lived in a housing complex for foreign graduate students with families, but it would be more apt to call it a commune of sorts; it was extremely safe, collective, elaborately enclosed, and geographically separate both from campus and the rest of the town. I honestly can't imagine a safer place for kids. Every one of the 100+ residents had children, and there were lots of stay-at-home moms out in the backyard at pretty much all times.

The one thing that all foreigners could agree on, from dozens of nationalities around the globe, was that it was completely normal for a school-aged child to get home from school by themselves and spend the afternoon and/or early evening alone, calling on neighbours or others on hand if they needed help. Practically, many of these graduate students struggled to survive on tiny stipends, and took (sometimes not so legal) jobs to make ends meet. They also had to work harder than any American to try to have a chance of staying in America after their studies were complete.

Indiana state law and campus law enforcement did not take kindly to this. I was probably the only child of ex-Soviet extraction that was not at some point kidnapped by the university's security and turned over to an American foster family for two or three days while they sabre-rattled the parents with child neglect charges. These poor students had no money, no understanding of the US legal system, and they were helpless and scared. Many of them had to go through the "welcome to America, here's your middle finger!" experience. It was almost an established hazing ritual to be harassed by CPS/social services.

This harassment was a routine occurrence, and after a while, I learned that university security were not our friends, subconsciously souring me on police for life when I otherwise had no traumatic experiences on which to base that. They were always watching us, profiling us, trying to identify patterns such as seeing a child out after dark (which is like 4:30 PM in the winter in northern Indiana) routinely. Did they not have anything better to do? It was absolutely bewildering for almost all of the residents to learn that US state law considered it child neglect to leave a child unattended until age twelve; this would be unthinkable in most places around the globe.

curiousjorge2• 11 years 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

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.

kuschku13• 11 years 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

curiousjorge2• 11 years ago

that has no relevance here. Germany vs North America for gods sakes.

mlvljr• 11 years ago

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

trhway• 11 years 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• 11 years 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• 11 years ago

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

saeranv• 11 years 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-a...

kailuowang2• 11 years 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• 11 years 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

jazzyk• 11 years 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• 11 years 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?

IkmoIkmo2• 11 years 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.

somberi• 11 years 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• 11 years 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• 11 years 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• 11 years 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• 11 years 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.

jmadsen2• 11 years 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-i... 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.

dang3• 11 years 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).

jmadsen2• 11 years 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• 11 years 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.

Why Japanese Kids Can Walk to School Alone

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