New York Sun columnist Lenore Skenazy has recently come under media and public scrutiny for letting her then 9-year old son Izzy (now 10 years) ride a New York city subway by himself. Skenazy wrote about Izzy’s adventurous, carefree jaunt in her April 1, 2008 Sun column. Parents were outraged; morning news show pundits stared wide-eyed at Skenazy in disbelief and paid on air psychologists extolled the virtues of safety and good parenting skills.
In her article entitled “Here is Your Metro Card” Skenazy said:
“Anyway, for weeks my boy had been begging for me to please leave him somewhere, anywhere, and let him try to figure out how to get home on his own. So on that sunny Sunday I gave him a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and several quarters, just in case he had to make a call.
No, I did not give him a cell phone. Didn’t want to lose it. And no, I didn’t trail him, like a mommy private eye. I trusted him to figure out that he should take the Lexington Avenue subway down, and the 34th Street cross-town bus home. If he couldn’t do that, I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think… Long story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence.”
Was young master Skenazy’s journey perilous, dangerous or the scheme of an uncaring mother? To some the answer might be to the affirmative. But hold on, American history—past and current—is full of examples of parents that allowed their young charges to learn, really learn, the old fashion way—through their experiences. In this day of instant messaging and cell phones where parents keep their adult, college-aged, children tethered to their apron strings with constant calls enquiring whether they got enough sleep, passed their mid-term tests, took their vitamins or ate a sufficient breakfast.
Consider the fact that many years ago another mother in London (United Kingdom) put her four year old son out of the family car miles from home and told to find his way home. The young boy that found his way home was Richard Branson the founder of Virgin Airlines and one of the richest people in the world. Also, Branson was a school dropout.
How would the average American parent react if little Johnny was suddenly thrust into harm’s way as a soldier in Iraq? How would the country react to the news that teenagers were being conscripted to fight in a war? Well, one of the greatest and most decorated naval admirals in American history, who as a twelve year old, commandeered a captured British whaling vessel during the Civil War was David Farragut.
Another enterprising and curious youngster was Thomas Edison. During the Civil War Edison, then age twelve, traveled on trains across the U.S. obtaining news from telegraph operators, which he published in his financially successful broadsheet during the Civil War. It was the first American newspaper to carry such in-depth news on the Civil War. This same adventurous and curious young man, who later invented the filament for the electric light and numerous other inventions, only attended school for three months of his entire life.
So, maybe there is something to be said for allowing American youngsters to explore, learn and live. If this type of learning experience will spark creativity, learning and innovation in American educational institutions I am all for passing out train tokens to every school-aged youth supplemented by John Taylor Gatto’s excellent book The Underground History of American Education.
