Whenever I search for cycling news, I stumble upon the strangest things. Most of these oddball items have nothing to do with what I’m searching for. Still, curiosity gets the better of me and I feel compelled to click on the link, just to see what it is.
One such link actually looked somewhat promising. I thought it might provide some insight on whether kids were beginning to bike or ride to school, and if so, would tell me why or why not.
As usual, I glanced at the URL to make a quick determination about the source of the information. When I saw that this article was posted on Boston.com, a site affiliated with The Boston Globe newspaper, I thought it would be legit.
The article started out with the exclamation: “Today is Massachusetts Walk and Bicycle to School Day!” Is it really? Despite being a Massachusetts resident, I hadn’t heard so much as a whisper about it.
I read on. The author explained that this event was part of the the Safe Routes to School program by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT), but did not elaborate upon the event at all.
Confusion set in as I perused the page for clues as to what this brief, three paragraph article was about. It was only when I read the page’s background information that I figured out what this was.
It was some sort of “blog” — although not by my definition. The blog’s description said that it focused on parenting issues. And it fell under the “Moms” section of the site.
With no children under my charge, I don’t read parenting blogs. But, for the sake of children everywhere, I hope that other parenting blogs are better than this one.
This article’s author was identified as the producer of the Moms section of the site. One would expect the producer, whose bio suggests that she is a writer, to know something about posting information on the Internet.
Rule one was broken: there was no date given for this event. The timestamp on the post, which was our only clue about what date she was referring to, was May, 1, 2013 at 10:14 AM.
What made this particularly strange was the bulk of the post where she directed a list of questions to other parents:
“Did you walk to school with your child today? Did your child walk or bike to school? How did it go? Some schools encouraged students to make signs such as “It’s cool to walk to school!” and handed out stickers to kids for participating. What did your school do?”
Seriously? That no one answered her in the comment section was no surprise.
Was this really the best Boston.com could do to provide news about an event which encourages kids to ride their bikes or walk instead of always relying on buses and cars to get to school? Only a search engine could tell me for sure.
So, I searched for this event using two different search engines and came up with virtually no results for the 2013 walk. There were a few hits for previous years. Yet only one article came up towards the top of the search results.
It was an article from the Salem News, which is based in Salem, Massachusetts. Although it did mention the 2013 Massachusetts Walk and Bike to School Day, it also mentioned that Salem had decided to hold the event two days later — on May 3, 2013 — because it “fit in better with Salem’s schedule.” What does this mean? Do towns have schedules which preclude participation in statewide events? I’ve never heard of this before.
But, back to the original article. Another thing that struck me about it was the photograph the author used for an article about biking and walking to school. It was a stock photo of several kids standing still, presumably because a mom-blogger couldn’t be expected to use her phone or digital camera to photograph kids walking or biking.
Thinking about this situation was very discouraging. Neither the parents nor the news outlets thought this event deserved much attention.
There was mention of a significant number of kids participating: “According to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, 86 schools across the state are participating today, which equals about 25,000 students.” However, due to the lack of enthusiasm outside of the participating schools, I wonder what sort of message this sent to the kids.
Did they see this as a one-time event, as a novelty? Or was there emphasis on making this a permanent part of their lives? I suspect the latter due the paucity of publicity and the fact that for many participants this will be a celebration rather than a change in behavior.
Statewide and national events are good for drawing attention to things. Yet, ultimately, children’s behavior will only change if their parents set a good example and teach them to value biking and walking.
For the sake of our planet, our cities, and the health of today’s children, I hope that next year parents and the media will take Massachusetts Walk and Bicycle to School Day more seriously, and will use it as a basis for changing their own behavior, as well as that of their kids.
