How would you react to a child’s request to walk or cycle to school alone? It is very likely that the answer to the question will vary greatly according to the city, social context, economic situation and personal experience.
However, a certain amount of concern must be a feeling that accompanies all of us, as we know that the streets and other public spaces of most Brazilian cities are not prepared for children and young people to have experiences of freedom and autonomy.
People around the world, when faced with the same fears and insecurities, have built solutions and initiatives such as Bicibús, originating in Spain, which allows children, accompanied or not by caregivers, to cycle more safely through the streets of cities like Madrid. and Barcelona.
The program started with 5 children and, today, hundreds of them go to school cycling in groups on Fridays. With a set schedule and route, children take to the street on a fun journey accompanied by music and the sound of bicycle horns.
The number of Bicibús has grown and, currently, more than 1,000 people are part of this initiative. Bicibús demonstrates how collectivizing an individual mode of transport can make commuting to school more fun and safer.
In addition to building safe conditions, this initiative contests the priority given to cars and motorcycles on city roads, occupying them completely instead of restricting the movement of children to cycling on bike lanes and lanes. This is because spaces dedicated to active mobility are almost always insufficient or designed exclusively for commuting to work and not for safe access to school and other places of activities related to shopping, leisure or health.
It is important to highlight that some initiatives in Brazil also promote actions to transform the way to school. Such as those promoted by Corrida Amiga, which carries out various actions in schools, public and private, through educational activities such as guided walks through the city, learning about conceptual issues, cultural and recreational activities in public spaces, etc. All this to encourage the adoption of walking as a means of transport to go to school.
According to Silvia Stuchi, founding director of the NGO, “the child who travels to school by car or in school transport does not have the same experience as a child who walks around the city, considering the possibility of physical activity, learning in the city, because the city is rich in content that cannot be accessed only through books, which only contributes to the enrichment of the pedagogical content of each discipline”.
The director of the organization highlights that, among the main difficulties commonly identified for carrying out the walks to school, is the fear felt by the adults responsible for these children. In a report, Stuchi reveals that, at first, the children were asked to be escorted by traffic agents in external activities. However, when reflecting on what message would be conveyed to children, the option of proceeding without agents proved to be viable and safe, which also provided a learning process for caregivers and school staff.
The route map is one of the tools used by the organization to induce children to reflect on the place they live and live, the route they take and the means of transport they use. As an example, we can mention the experience of Vila Cisper, a neighborhood in the city of São Paulo, where during an activity a child revealed that his path was very unsafe and dangerous, given the high chances of being run over by vehicles due to the high speed of the vehicles and the drunkenness of the drivers.
As an alternative, the child pointed out that he would feel safer if there were fences along the entire route separating the sidewalk from the lane to protect it from cars. This report only emphasizes the importance of activities such as the one promoted by the organization, bearing in mind, as Silvia defends, that “it is not about walling up the city, but about supervising, educating and generating environments that favor coexistence between the different means of transport”. .
After collecting data in order to verify the impact of the actions promoted, the organization found that there was an increase in the number of children and caregivers who started to adopt walking transport to go to school.
I take the opportunity of April 28, World Education Day celebrated last Thursday, to remind you that it is necessary to rethink access to education from different perspectives, including with regard to the means of transport and the paths used to reach schools, sports fields, educational centers and other meeting places. Because learning doesn’t start in the classroom, it extends to every opportunity to learn a little more about life, the world and society. So, in order to create more conscious citizens, it is necessary to make their paths to school possible.
