The Ando family are not unique. You see, Japanese families encourage their children to travel to and from school alone every single day. By Western standards, Japanese culture emphasises independence and self-reliance from an extraodinarily young age. In fact, one of Japan's most loved and longest running TV shows, is called My First Errand, In which young children are given neighbourhood tasks, and secretly filmed as they set about them alone, sometimes even with a younger sibling in tow. My First Errand is appealing because all Japanese people had that experience of having their parents entrust them to do some simple job where they leave the house on their own and they come back to the house on their own. And it's funny. Jake Adelstein was the first Westerner to work a crime beat in Japan. giving him an insight into Japanese crime and justice no other Westerner has. He, like many foreigners, noticed something different about Japan. As I was walking to the station i would see these young kids coming from the station with their little backpacks on, walking towards the school, thiking, where are the adults? Like, who is making sure these kids cross the road and get to school okay? Even my own daughter, when she was about four or five, and she said, I'm going to walk there myself. And she left, and I put down the phone and chased after her, and she ran all the way to school, and of course nothing happened to her. And I was like, you know? Maybe in Japan that's how it works. It's Monday morning on Sydney's affluent North Shore, where the Frasier family are starting the day. My name is Rob Fraser, I'm 47 years of age, there's three of us in the family. There's myself, there's Jane, and Emily, who is 10. There's an apple in your bag Em. Please don't leave the apple in your bag all week. Am i turning lights off again? Yes, you are. All right. Tennis raquet is in the car? No, not yet. Wow. Um... it's cool. i had a conversation with her the other day about what would she like to do, would she like
to get the bus to school, would she like to go on her own. She made it very clear that she would like to do that. One thing I'm most looking forward to in high school is walking home from school by myself, And having a key and everything. Give me a kiss? I'll see you later. In fact, studies show kids want to walk to school. It's their parents that won't or can't. The evidence is irrefutable - that children are not safe to cross roads on their own until they're ten. That's why we're so nervous about children being allowed to walk on their own to school, though they might be on the footpath the whole way. But it should be safe. You see, Emily's School, Middle Harbour Public, was the first to trial a 40 km p/h school zone in Australia. It's also a cultural reason. If you look at the way Australians behave when they reach a school zone, I mean, a lot of people have one thing on their minds, and that's themselves. They don't care less about anyone else. Group socialisation is huge in Japan. Having parents pick up and drop off their kids would be bad for Japan incorporated, and that's one of the reasons you probably don't see it. It's also one of the other reasons that Japan and Japanese society is set up to make it safe for kids to commute to school, because if parents have to be responsible for that commute, they're going to have to reorganise the entire workforce and the way companies work. Japan, of course, has an exceptionally low crime rate. They have more than five times our population but less than four times the homocides we have. I've covered very few cases of children being abducted. Maybe one child death in the 12 years I was a reporter. That's the only one I encountered. But to say kids go alone to school because of a low crime rate would miss more subtle and underlying forces. Our society suffers from a paranoia about leaving children on their own. I think some of it is probably ill-perceived. But a lot of it is understood. I don't believe there's any more dangers now, other than traffic, than there were 30, 40 years ago. I think the fact that it's more in the public eye, it's in the press all the time, I think also with the social pressure element of letting go and letting them go and do things at such a young age, I think is actually quite difficult to take on. Kawaii ko literally means cute kid, and tabi o saseyo means put them on a trip, so the meaning is, if you love your kids, or you want your kids to be smarter, send them to do something, send them on a trip. Kids are less independent nowdays. it's just the way it is. You have got me thinking about it. You've got me thinking that maybe I'm being a little bit paranoid.
I think this is nothing special, because children also go alone to school in Germany or France and many more countries.
I grew up in Switzerland and my experience as a kid is similar to those japanese children. But I've seen an increase in my village in mothers driving their kids to school in their huge SUVs, driving too fast there, parking illegally in front of the school and possibly endangering the kids that walk to school. I once saw pictures of kids that were asked to draw their experiences of their commute to school. Kids that are driven there by car dont know anything about what's on the way between home and school. Their drawings where empty, they only remember their own house and the school building. They get in the car, possibly game on their phones and get out in front of school while kids that walk have really vivid memories of their way to school like landmarks, neighbours who they meet in the morning or schoolmates that take the walk with them. I can't imagine not having all these memories and experiences
I grew up in Italy, and it was the same, bathed and dressed by myself, made my own school bag, took the bus across town to go to school in first grade, got sent to the corner store to buy something that my mom needed, etc. Kids as young as six are perfectly capable of doing these tasks. By 10, I could cook a simple meal for myself, not having to wait for my mom to get home from work if I wanted to eat something hot. By 12, I was responsible for my own laundry. My mother worked shifts at a hospital, and could not be there for me in the mornings, nonetheless, I made it safely to school every day. If I wanted to visit a friend, I would also take public transportation.
I think Americans believe their way of life is the default, but in many countries very few families could afford to shuttle their kids everywhere, nor they would want to. Empty nest syndrome is an expression that I have learned in the US, before I came here I had no idea people tied so much of their self identity and self worth to parenthood.
In American suburbs if someone saw your 7 year old walking alone you'd have CPS (child protective services) and the cops called on you.
This is the same in South Korea. But also like with South Korea, Japanese kids typically suffer from being overburdened with school work, which usually takes up the majority, or even all, of their waking hours in a given week. It's not unusual for kids to finish their regular school and go to a private academy for one particular subject after that. They might have to go to 2 or 3 such academies during a normal week, even going in on Saturdays. This leaves them with insane amounts of homework, to the point that most kids don't go to sleep until around midnight because they're busy doing homework for all their classes.
This obviously causes a lot of stress-related problems, and kids in Japan and South Korea can get burned out and demoralized very easily by this lifestyle. It also adds tremendous pressure on them to do well in school, and when they fail they are devastated because that's the sole purpose of their life. They have to take these massive college entrance exams that will basically determine the course of their life from that point, because if they don't get into a good school, they can't get a good job, or so they're told. It's actually quite sad.
So the lack of overbearing parents in non-school environments is probably necessary to keep them sane!
Meanwhile in America, parents are literally prosecuted for child abuse for letting their children walk to school.
Helicopter parents create underachivers
My twin eight year olds get themselves up in the morning. Dressed, ready and fed themselves. They also walk two dogs, turn off all lights and on their bikes to school about a 1/4 mile from our side walked suburban home. At the start of last year their bikes were the only two on the racks...the other day I went up there, there were five bikes. The teachers thanked me. When new students parents asked about being bike friendly, the staff sited the twins. When other students want to bike, they used my kids as a group safety buffer, two kids now meet up with my kids on the corner.
Absolutely good for the Japanese and any other country that that teaches kids independence through experience. Any parent that let's their kids grow up get's a round of applause from me.