Missing the school bus

The trend of sending children by car to school needs to be discouraged

If you are unfortunate enough to live near a school in one of our bigger cities, chances are that there will be huge traffic jam right outside your home every time school begins and ends. You are worse hit if you happen to have a play school next door. Since they8217;re usually situated deep inside residential colonies, where buses are not allowed, and they offer no transport services on the pretext that the children are too young to go by bus, there will be a huge line of cars ferrying the little ones to and fro. I can8217;t understand why, if three-year-olds are considered old enough to go to school with adult supervision, arrangements cannot be made for them to travel safely by organised public transport as well.

The personal automobile is the single greatest polluter. Any large city in India would have over 20 lakh children going to private schools. Even if two per cent of them travel by car, that would mean at least an additional 30,000 cars on the roads.

Just ten years ago, a child going to school by car was the exception, not the norm. Now, with higher disposable incomes and more two-car households, many well-heeled parents prefer to send their progeny by car. While car pools are marginally better than individual car use, there is nothing that quite beats the bus for a variety of reasons. Most importantly, kids enjoy the social interaction provided on the bus. They get to meet kids of all ages and make friends on the ride. It8217;s only adults who crib about the weather. Kids quickly adjust to their environment and enjoy themselves as long as they8217;re with their friends. The only concern here is that the driver of the bus is well-trained and careful, and that the kids themselves are supervised 8212; and more closely monitored if they happen to be very young.

A typical school bus can accommodate over 60 kids. If all schoolchildren were to commute by bus, the number of cars on the road would go down by more than half, and pollution would simultaneously reduce dramatically. But to achieve this, schools will have to play a more pro-active role by encouraging bus transport. In fact, it should be made mandatory and non-negotiable. Irrespective of how long it takes their kids to get home, parents should not be given a choice in choosing their children8217;s transport facilities. In Delhi, according to the Ganguly Committee8217;s recommendations, the maximum points for admissions are given to students living in the vicinity of the school. Yet this does not seem to have made a significant difference to the number of private vehicles requisitioned to transport them.

There is, today, a great emphasis on environmental awareness in our schools. Kids are taught the value of saving electricity and water. Some have banned the use of plastic. But when it comes to transportation, no one appears to bother. It is time we looked at how we can transport our children to school in safe, congenial and environmentally-friendlier ways. The car-to-school trend needs to be severely discouraged.