([EMAIL PROTECTED]) writes: > This is turning out to be an interesting discussion. Since I also do quite a bit of > pedestrian training for children I decided to look up a report on the Cognitive and > Metacognitive Processes Underlying The Development of Children's Pedestrian Skills. > You can find it at www.detr.gov.uk/roadsafety/no6. > I haven't looked at this yet, but thanks for the link. I think that children develop perception of what is happening all around them at a very early age - look at children running around in a schoolyard - they are not continually bumping into each other (except deliberately!) - and this is in circumstances where the behaviour of the other children is essentially random. So clearly they are able to anticipate and predict at this level. But in today's society, children rarely interact with traffic. At home they are bundled into SUV's, unable to see the traffic ahead because of the headrests on the front seats. Very little opportunity here to learn how the traffic works. At the mall they are sheperded from the parking stall to the entrance, with no concept of "roads", "intersections", or who has right of way. When they go to school they wait at the side of the road for the school bus - and if it's on the other side of the road all the traffic magically stops so that they can cross the road. No chance to learn to cross the road safely. Then at school the bus probably lets them out in a restricted-access area. Again, no interaction and no learning. Finally, arriving back at home they again cross the road, this time from in front of a parked vehicle - which in any other circumstances is the most dangerous place to cross, being hidden from traffic approaching from the rear. I have taught children (other than my own) and their lack of traffic sense was, in short, terrifying. At first I wondered if their parents were blindfolding them in their vehicles! My younger son, 8 at the time, came to one of the classes, and he too noticed this. It was from those experiences that I developed the train of thought I've summarized above. It's an indictment of society that we've taught childern to be afraid of traffic, instead of understanding the rules and how they work (or don't). A simple example of this is crossing the road. I'm convinced that most children now don't learn how to cross the road - because it's a skill related to walking to school and to shopping in a neighbourhood street, not in a mall. But even so, it is North American practice to force pedestrians to cross at an intersection - where traffic is coming from as many as four different directions, and visibility is often poor. Now granted sometimes you have to cross at a intersection, but often you don't. In the UK we were discouraged from crossing at intersections, and encouraged to cross mid-block. Here traffic only comes from two directions, visibility is better, and drivers aren't distracted by the other challenges asssociated with negotiating an intersection. PS - can I suggest that we trim the previous posts unless they are actually required to develop the reply. I've just waded through I think 8 levels of previous posts..... This I think is an indictment of Microsoft's habit of placing the reply before the question... -- Peter James Ottawa, Ontario ------ To unsubscribe, send a blank message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Club Office: [EMAIL PROTECTED], (613) 230-1064 Web/mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.cyberus.ca/~obcweb Newsletter: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.cyberus.ca/~obcweb/Newsletter ==^================================================================ EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?aVxiDo.a2i8p1 Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email was sent to: [email protected] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
