Anyone with a grandparent who reminisces about walking five miles to school, uphill both ways, knows that people sometimes exaggerate the hardships they faced in their youth. Still, we can trust the basic facts about life a century and a half ago: School was open, even the day after a snowstorm.
–The AtlanticThis piece in The Atlantic concludes, on the basis of a Laura Ingalls Wilder story, kids today are wimps because they can't get to school on snowy days. Partly, they're right. I am reminded by somebody who was there that schools in Duluth, in the 50's, didn't close until the temperature got down to -30º. (I don't know what the policy is now but I imagine it might be different. Also, the schools in Atlanta closed at +30º.)
The difference between then and now, though (according to the same somebody) isn't the kids or the temps, it's liability. More kids today are bussed to school than was the case back in the previous century, and the schools and their insurance companies are scared witless of slippery, snowy roads.
Maybe we were safer back in the old days walking, or maybe it was just that if anything had happened to us on the way to school it wouldn't have been the school's (or bus company's) fault.
Of course kids today are still wimps, but for some other reason—although we're not quite sure what that reason is.
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