Sir, – Ken Reid’s letter (August 16th) about the increased number of children travelling to school by car reminds me of going to school in Dublin in the 1960s. Back then, almost everyone walked or ran, a few went on bikes, and a few by bus. I remember girls skipping on the way to school.
I never saw anyone being dropped off or being collected in a car, although we sometimes “scutted” short distances on the tailgates of slow-moving trucks.
We also charged home for dinner in the middle of the day and back again for afternoon classes.
Admittedly, there were significantly fewer cars on the roads but there were lots of cattle en route to Dublin port. “I was held up by the cows” was once a valid excuse for being late for school in certain parts of the city.
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My mother, of course, convinced us that we had it easy. When she was young, she had to clamber over fields to primary school (in her bare feet when the weather was warm and carrying a sod of turf for the classroom fire when it was freezing). When she was older, she had to cycle what sounded like a stage in the Rás Tailteann to and from secondary school, except on bad roads and on an old bone-shaker Raleigh.
Seeing grainy footage of the current generation of children being driven to school will, no doubt, both amuse and appal future viewers of Reeling in the Years whose children, home-schooled by robot teachers, may rarely have to put a foot outside the door. – Yours, etc,
CHRIS FITZPATRICK,
Dublin 6.