Right off I got to say that I'm against busing kids to school on account kids ought to walk and work more for their own good. Busing uses energy unnecessarily, herds kids into gangs, and deprives them of healthy exercise.
So how'na hell did we get in this mess?
It all began after the Revolution in '76 when all people were declared free and equal. This was tough to put in effect and so a Civil War had to be fought to affirm the free and equal idea.
So when the Supreme Court got stuck with the free and equal idea in education they had to come out for busing to achieve integration. The Court was bound to catch hell from most everybody because the human animal is a contradictory mess.
What goes wrong here is that as soon as revolutionists set up free and equal form of government, somebody always wants to be better than others and that vanity knocks the hell out of any good system.
The idea of busing started with the rich people having their kids excluded from us riffraff and have them go to exclusive schools where they'll meet only their k... so they'll mix and marry with their kind and their fortunes stay in the family.
Religious also like to keep the kids of their flock confined to their kind of teaching. If kids early in life are taught to be Catholics, Jews, Baptists or anything else, they hold to this early training all through their lives. So to assure continuous existence, religions collect youngsters from far and wide by bus and bring them to their training schools.
Isn't it all so silly? Kids are bused to a school, and once there, the most athletic of them are sent out to run a couple of miles to stay in shape for the big game. Wouldn't it be more sensible for them to run to school and avoid the bus?
I agree with an education critic, Jack Blessington, who argues like me that kids ought to be taught to work early otherwise they'll find it difficult to cope with life's uncertainties.
Everybody going to school is not going to be important; nor successful. In fact, this ageless wisdom from the Bible still applies: "The race is not to the swift; nor battle to the strong; nor yet bread to the wise." time and chance account mostly in one's fortune.
What education ought to instill is an inner calmness that can put up with failure which many of us end up in.
It's kind of sad that after a football game at a high school where kids mostly attend, the stands are snowed with cigarette butts and beer cans. Kids are uneasy right off the start.
Well, in my time, there was no busing nor any of those frills. I was a low class "Ginny" whose old man was a foreigner coal digger who couldn't talk much American. We lived in a company house and were as poor as the neighbors who were either "Dagoes", "Hunkies", or "Polacks" - low class like us.
I was cheap to bring up. I went barefoot, and when I got a cut or bruise I was my own doctor. I'd wrap my wounded foot with a plantain leaf and then bound it with a rag and I survived. Many is the time I had my toes wrapped up.
My parents never had to buy heating fuel. I got the job early to go the mine's coal dump where I'd salvage the coal from the slate and put it in a bag and carry it home to our coal shed.
Only rich "American" people bought coal; but since there were lots of Ginnies like me we didn't feel disgrace about our task. I used to scrounge the dumps looking for discarded wheels, and I made wheelbarrows which eased my burden.
I didn't mind this much except when I thought I did my task and wanted to go play with other kids. This was frowned upon by my parents who said I wore out shoes. Though I was barefoot much of the time, that didn't seem to be taken into account.
Naturally, I rebelled and went off for a whole day at a time and go swimming. When us kids got hungry, we'd forage off the land. I ate green apples in all stages of growth as well as berries, roots and crayfish.
For being disobedient, my mother scolded that I'd end up in the "Arbeit haus" but I'm thankful that I was. For once, when I went through the ice while testing it for skating. I was lucky that I knew how to swim out. I was also lucky that the couple of kids I was with had some matches which they started a fire with while in the nude I ran around to keep warm.
By and by we got a roaring fire going and I kept warm while holding my clothes with a pole over the fire. My parents never knew, and that's the way I wanted it else I'd got a beatin' and I felt I was punished enough.
I did hear some older people talk about my experience and they made foreboding predictions that I'd end up being tied up with rheumatism when I got older: but that was just old wives' humbug. Though I got many colds and coughs, I recollect suffering no cold or pneumonia after that dunking in ice water.