Depending upon where you live, buses may or may not be a common feature in your neighborhood, come school season. However, in many, many places, buses are ubiquitous, to which, at least buses have a real purpose which is to pick up and at the end of the school day, drop off school children. In an era in which there has never been so many single parent households this is a real boon, to have that public transportation available, in addition to the fact, that never have so many traditional two-parent households, had both parents working. All of this basically makes sense, until you realize that at virtually all of the school bus stops that there are parents standing there with their children in the morning, and then later waiting for their children at the end of school day. What gives?
From a certain perspective, it's hard to fault parents or guardians for wanting to make sure that their children do safely get on the bus in the morning, or for being there when their precious kids come home from school at the end of the day. The best way of looking at this, is it is a parent's prerogative, and if they so wish to devote their time for safety reasons, social reasons, or whatever, to be at the bus stop for their children, than that is their choice. There are, however, a couple comments to make on this, as for instance, when school districts as part of the ever expanding nanny state, insist that they will not drop off your child at their designated bus stop, unless the authorized parent or guardian is there, but instead, will actually take the child back to school, to await the parent to pick the child up later, in addition to the fact, that a visit from child care services will be activated for this sort of mishap. While a policy like this, sort of makes sense from the perspective that a little kindergartener is vulnerable, so is the fact, that children are not nearly as helpless, hopeless, and clueless as bureaucrats might believe. In point of fact, neighborhoods are typically filled with other children, parents, neighbors, friends, and so forth, in addition to the point that a parent need not have their child in their visual field 24/7. The second comment about dropping off children without their parents being around, comes down to the fact that if children are treated as if they can never be outside of their house, in their own neighborhood, alone, than one should not expect these children to ever develop the capacity to make decisions on their own.
The fact of the matter is, that all of these bus stops, all of these parent's cars, all of these parents milling around, just typically makes for more time and resources wasted, because they are missing the biggest point of all, which is, these parents mistakenly believe that they are diligent and good parents by taking and picking up their children from the designated school bus stop, rather than recognizing that the most important part of the day is what is actually being taught to their children at school. While it may be commendable that parents care about their children's physical safety, they are missing almost the entire boat, if they don't also recognize it's what goes into a child's head that creates our future leaders, for better or for worse.