This house would abolish school runs

INTRODUCTION As more educational institutions became available, parents were able to choose which school or kindergartens they want to send their kids to. Parents also wanted to protect their children from possible risks such as car accidents or abduction on their kids extended traveling time to schools. This is the most widely accepted cause for school runs. There is nothing fundamentally flawed in parental care towards a kid. However, question arises when this "parental care" causes too much problems socially and for individuals as well. In this debate, I firmly argue that this parental care has caused too much harm that it has to be abolished. I have two arguments regarding this issue: social and individual. I will deliver each argument respectively on round this round and next round. Then in third round, I will provide clash analysis with summary and conclusion at the final round. ARGUMENT 1: Social Issues (Harming others) I have two sup-points under this category. Sub-Point 1: School run ironically is putting life of kids at risk. The purpose of school run in the first place is to protect children from potential danger on their way to schools. There have been precedents where students were abducted, attacked or encountered car accidents. Being concerned, more parents decided to send their kids to school themselves. This is proven in the case of England, where proportion of primary-aged children walking to school decreased from 61% to 50% between 1994 and 2004 [1]. Given from the fact that the statistical data was given about eight years ago (close to nine), there is a good reason to believe that the rate is even higher currently. With so many cars in front of school, with limited parking space, school run results in havoc in school regions. This havoc eventually poses a greater threat than kids attending school without school run. Many newsletter articles, council officials and policemen urge that there is a higher risk of students being ran over by cars of other parents than students walking to school during these morning and afternoon chaos [2, 3, 4, and 5]. This also logically makes sense because an average elementary (primary) student or a kindergartener is easy to be missed by drivers. That is why there are many cases where small kids are accidently ran over by cars trying to park to accelerate. In such a crowded condition like gate of a school in the morning time, it is very dangerous for so many cars to be around with small kids trying to get off from cars. The risk can be eliminated by abolishing school runs but using other safer, environmentally friendly and physically healthy alternatives such as gathering group of students to walk together under supervision of an adult (called "walking school bus" [3]), cycling on bicycle road, or an actual school bus that accommodates more people, saving environment as well. School run was a remedy for possible risk that students might face on their way to school. However, this remedy is as risky as the original threat, or possibly even more risky. It is purposeless and harmful. Sub-Point 2: Besides from the fact that school run causes 8% of traffic congestion at the peak period (again, Britain), school runs also cause severe illegal parking problems as well. Parents park their cars on bus stops, yellow lines or zigzag lines. On this issue, PC Feather, governor at Wibsey Primary said "It is a massive problem. Just about every primary school now has got that type of issue." [2] There was also an incident in 2011, October where a camera car caught more than 30 illegal parking incidents done by parents on one a day in a small country located in Country Durham. Such frequent illegal actions result in roads being blocked for some while, further congestion in traffic and buses being delayed due to irresponsible parking on their stops. Even though this is not a huge problem that has to have immediate, we do know it is pretty widespread, viewing from the fact that majority of people in Britain wants school run to be abolished in their country and also from the quote above. There is also a benefit in abolishing school run, along with eliminating other harms that I will continue to elaborate throughout the debate. SUMMARY The modern phenomenon, school run was meant to be a remedial solution for young students" exposure to potential risk while going to school. However, it is clear that the remedy ended up posing a worse threat to student communities. But not only this, by abolishing school run, we can also bring some benefits for traffic at the morning time will be gone and illegal parking problems around schools can also be solved as well. On my next round, I will focus on how school run can in fact be disadvantageous to the kids themselves. After that, I will explain how social issues merged with individual harms (which will be newly introduced) make abolition of school run necessary. REFERENCES [1]http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk... [2]http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk... [3]http://www.thisisderbyshire.co.uk... [4]http://www.gethampshire.co.uk... [5]http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk... [6] http://www.walkingschoolbus.org... [7] http://www.which.co.uk...