Returning to Australia from Bhutan, I’m often frustrated by the way we seem to replace responsibility for control. I’m not sure whether it’s enforcing rules to compensate for a lack of responsibility or if responsibility is lost because we have laws to compensate. Either way, I think it’s sad.
People are no longer as free to live their lives as they see fit. It’s apparently not ok to take pictures at the beach because you might use the photos for illegal purposes. I would have thought that it would be better to trust people to do the right thing, allow us our freedoms, and take action against the few who abuse it. Sure there have been a number of paedophiles arrested recently, but does that mean that we should stop living our lives?
We’ve also recently been limited to 40km/h in school zones at certain times. This is presumably being done to reduce the number of accidents involving children, but isn’t it just teaching kids that cars will slow down for them? In actual fact, the limitation only applies at the beginning and end of the school day and only within 300m of the school gate. What about the rest of the walk to school and evenings / weekends? If our children get used to cars moving at 40km/h, aren’t they more likely to misjudge traffic moving at 60km/h at other times / other locations? More of a concern, won’t they learn that they can step out onto the road and expect traffic to stop?
Children in Bhutan carry their baby siblings on their backs all day from about 4 years old. They learn responsibility early and few (no?) babies are lost to irresponsible children, yet these children still know how to have fun. In this, I like the Bhutanese approach. Isn’t it better to introduce children to the real world early and teach them to take responsibility for their own actions?
I don’t think childen should be driving at all, even at 40kmph. They should walk to school like we had to.