THE PSYCHOLOGIST : British couple threatened with social services because their children ride bikes to school

British couple threatened with social services because their children ride bikes to school

A couple who let their two young children cycle to their private school have been warned they could be reported to social services unless they supervise the journey. Oliver and Gillian Schonrock let their son and daughter, five and eight respectively, make the one-mile trip from their home on their own. They say it helps to teach the youngsters independence, self-confidence and responsibility.

But other parents and teachers at £12,000-a-year Alleyn's Junior School in Dulwich, south east London, are said to think the practice is irresponsible and dangerous. Headteacher Mark O'Donnell has met with Mr and Mrs Schonrock and told them the school is under an obligation to consider the children's safety and has a legal responsibility to notify the council if they fear it is being put at risk.

Mr Schonrock, 40, the managing director of an e-commerce company who walked alone to school as a boy, said: 'We wanted to recreate the simple freedom of our children. 'Like everybody else our age we spent a lot more time with our friends playing in the streets or parks without parental supervision and without our parents becoming unduly worried. 'These days children live such regimented lives. They can do nothing unless it's planned. We are trying to let them enjoy their lives and teach them a little bit about the risks of life.'

Mrs Schonrock, also 40, said she is 'confident that the benefits to our children far outweigh the potential risk from 'stranger danger', road traffic accidents and other factors.'

The couple's children cycle on the pavement from their home in west Dulwich to the school. Their route takes them alongside roads that become busy with traffic during the school run. At the halfway point they cross a road where there is a lollipop lady on duty.

On the return journey they are supervised, either by one of the parents or their nanny, which is deemed acceptable - but the Schonrocks have been told that they must ensure their children are accompanied on the journey to school as well or they will be referred to Southwark Council's Children's Services department.

Headteacher Mr O'Donnell told the Sunday Times: 'If a school feels a child in their care is at risk, they have a legal responsibility to notify the local authority.

'Is an eight year old responsible enough to come to school with a five year old and take responsibility when it comes to crossing busy roads? Or what would happen if the five year old has a tantrum?'

Mr and Mrs Schonrock say rules on child protection, rather than the school, are to blame for the predicament they find themselves in. Mrs Schonrock, who as a girl took the bus to school from the the age of four with her six-year-old sister, said: 'The question is do the government have the right to put an obligation on schools to not allow any level of risk whatsoever?'

Although schools are not responsible for children on their journey to school, guidance from the Department for Children, Schools and Families states that if a school 'believes or suspects that a child may be suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm' then it must refer the case to social services.

Today Catherine McDonald, Cabinet Member for Children's Services at Southwark Council, said: 'As this is an independent school, it is for them to decide how they arrange transport to school with the parents of their pupils.

'However, if an independent school does contact us, we'd give them the same advice as we do to our own schools, that they should develop a school travel plan with parents and children so they can get to school safely and in a way that promotes healthy living and is good for the environment. 'This would include both cycling and walking.'

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

1 comment:

EugeneJuly 8, 2010 at 4:26 AM
This is how I got to school at that age. I glad that I no know how evil, irresponsible, and incompetent my parents were in raising their children. It's amazing that we all survived into adulthood without the intervention of social services. But it's a good thing we have the nanny state now, to show our children that they should be totally dependant on others (not including their parents) to tell them what to do and think. And if they or their parents disagree then we will take them away from their parents and ban their bicycles. Since we have to eliminate all risk in life, shouldn't we just raise children in padded cells?

If only the government had been there when I was growing up to do everything for me, I could have avoided the exercise I got on my bicycle and gone straight from graduation to welfare, rather than wasting my time getting a job.

Perhaps these other parents who are so concerned about other peoples children should consider taking away the nintendo from their own children and giving them a bicycle to ride to school so they can get some exercise and fresh air. We might have healther children. But I suspect this is more about the children of those "other parents" wanting their parents to buy them bicycles so they can ride to school like those lucky Shonrock children, than it is about concern about the Shonrocks.
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Background

The essence of conservatism is caution. The essence of Leftism is anger

This blog is written solely by John Ray, who has a Ph.D. degree in psychology and 200+ papers published in the academic journals of the social sciences. It does occasionally comment on issues in psychology but is mainly aimed at giving a conservative psychologist's view on a broad range of topics. There are very few conservative psychologists.

The blog originated in Australia and many (but not most) posts discuss Australian matters. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart, which is the reason behind the old name for this blog. So events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.

A primer in American politics for non-Americans:

SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land

The "GOP" stands for "Grand Old Party" and refers to the Republican party. The GOP is at present center/Right, while the Democrats have been undergoing a steady drift Leftwards and now have policies similar to mainstream European Leftist parties.

The ideological identity of both parties has however been very fluid -- almost reversing itself over time. In the mid 19th century, the GOP was the party of big government and concern for minorities while the Democrats advertised themselves as "The party of the white man" -- an orientation that lasted into the mid 20th century in the South. The Democrats are still obsessed with race but have now flipped into support for discrimination AGAINST whites.

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Calibrated in whole degrees. Larger graph here

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Hugh Dalton, offered the Colonial Office during Attlee's 1945-51 Labour government, turned it down because "I had a horrid vision of pullulating, poverty stricken, diseased nigger communities, for whom one can do nothing in the short run and who, the more one tries to help them, are querulous and ungrateful."

Defensible and indefensible usages of the term "racism"

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FDR prolonged the Depression. He certainly didn't cure it.

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People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter:

The average African adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old and African Americans (who are partly white in ancestry) average out at a mental age of 14. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.

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