Comment by paulmooreparks

In Norway my children sometimes came home from primary school (ages five to twelve) with notes saying things like:

"We've planned a trip to the woods for next week, it's expected to be minus twenty Celsius so please make sure they have appropriate clothing, hats, gloves, boots. Also we will have a fire so make sure they bring some sausages and a hunting knife so they can cut sticks for the fire and to hold the sausages over the fire."

No. 2 son came home with a plaster on his arm after one such excursion, I think when he was about ten, and explained that one of his friends had been careless with his knife. There was no drama, the teacher carries a first aid kit for precisely this scenario, his friend was firmly told to not be so stupid, and the teacher used it to explain to the class why knives need to be properly handled.

Sad.

When I was a child, I always had with me a multi-tool Swiss army knife, including at school, because I was very frequently building various things, or disassembling others to see how they were made. That early experience was very influential in becoming a successful engineer.

Decades later, as an adult, I was astonished to learn about the so-called "no tolerance" policies of many US schools, where the possession of even a small knife or even of less dangerous tools may be a reason for severe punishment.

Obviously, as a child, starting with the second day of school when 6-year old, I have always gone to the school and back, every day, alone, even if initially that was about a half hour of walking and then the later schools required long commuting by public transportation. Also none of my colleagues have ever been brought to school by someone else, and like me they did not have any contact with their parents since morning till late in the afternoon. All this was considered normal at that time.

That has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with "safety" being a magic word that gets way to many people to turn off their brains so the school is using as a pretext to enforce capricious rules and basically teach the kinds "do what the system says, however stupid, or else".

200yr ago they'd have used some Victorian morals bullshit or religion to the same end.

I'm father of three daughters and they grew up almost like this in nineties. My grandchildren don't have this chance any more. It's a little bit about changing times, but mostly because of public – it's just not acceptable for others to do all these things and parents would get into real trouble. When I was 10, I drove tractor, had already several scars from knife and axe and visited my grandmother more than hundred km away alone. My daughters would be arrested if they would let their kids to do any of it.