A Bad Pick Up Line

I walk to school. When I arrive in the morning, a steady stream of cars drop off kids for early class, meetings with teachers, and other activities. When I leave in the afternoon, the line of cars is so long that it encircles the parking lot. Parents will sit in their car for a half hour or more waiting for their children to come out.

I am baffled. Why are they there? Why are they picking up their children as soon as school lets out?

The line is long at 3:15. The line disappears by 3:30 or 3:35. Why sit and wait that long? For that matter, why not let your child take the bus, walk, or ride a bike home?

Of course, sometimes there is a doctor appointment, skating lesson, or other obligation. But the number of cars waiting at the end of the day is far too many for those kind of periodic tasks.

Our school has over ninety clubs and sixty sports. Some of these require auditions or try outs, but a vast majority of them are open to all students. A handful meet in the morning before school starts, but a most activities and teams meet between 3:15 and 6pm after the class day has ended.

I want to knock on windows as I walk past the row of cars and ask, “Why are you here? Why are you picking up a child who should be able to find his or her own way home? Why isn’t your child involved after school?”

As a teacher of freshmen, I work hard to connect my students to our school’s co-curricular program of activities and athletics. Although there are no grades or transcripts for what happens in the afternoon, for many of my students, and many of us, sports, performing arts, clubs, and other activities were the real reason we went to school. They were also where we learned lessons that we carried into adulthood. The people with whom we spent time after school became our closest friends.

This is what the students who leave school at 3:15 are losing. Do they know how much they are missing? Are their parents who facilitate their departure aware of this price?

Yes, yes, yes: I play a spring sport, so in the fall I go home and several times a week, I work out or play with a club. I have a job. I go to youth group. That’s great. I don’t believe that the enormous line of cars is filled, even partially filled with these kids. The line is way too long.

High school is about more than classes. For many kids, classes are the gateway to the fun and wonderful things that happen after the final bell rings and the real love of learning begins. To deprive a student of this opportunity, even under the guise of helping them get home, sparing them bus embarrassment, or making their life easier, is to deny them a key component of their development.

Don’t pick your kids up after school! Don’t make it easy to get home. Do help them find their after school home. Do push them to join a club, be on or backstage, play a sport, or help with the countless events that occur all afternoon and into the evening at most high schools.

One my favorite aphorisms from Robert Heinlein’s Time Enough For Love is “Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy”. Here is my corollary: Don’t pick them up after school!