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I'm Canadian and grew up in the central part of a mid-sized city. Only my high school had a cafeteria and I was far enough that I while I walked to school, I didn't have enough time to walk home, eat lunch, and walk back. So I would either eat a packed lunch or go somewhere else for lunch. Some people took the bus, but I think the vast majority walked, especially in elementary and junior high when people lived a closer on average. There were probably some cases, but I don't remember anyone being driven to school by their parents.
I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the concept of not being allowed to leave at lunchtime. Did this apply to the students who lived near the school? How do they even stop you or know what you're doing? What is even the point of this? Why do they care where you eat lunch?
I think the best freedom you have that I lack as a Canadian is the freedom to live in any climate. Our choices are between cold and extremely cold.
Not only is the idea of students leaving for lunch unheard of, but using devices was strictly limited until I got to high school. It was a revelation actually being able to use my iPod at lunchtime when I entered high school. Maybe it's different now.
And once you were old enough to drive, you could technically schedule your classes with free periods at least in my area and leave during those, although it's strongly discouraged to leave gaps in the schedule. In my senior year of high school I had a free period in the morning and got to sleep in part of the week, which was heaven for a night owl like me.
Public schools are incredibly liability-averse and letting kids loose just isn't in their vocabulary. The US values freedom, but is terrified about children's safety to the point of neurosis. To some extent this reflects the safety profile of the US being different than Europe, to some extent it reflects the lower density and car-dependence of the US, to some extent it reflects our tortious legal system, but to a great extent I think it just reflects the neurotic substrate within American society.
Once the school day starts, almost no one is allowed in or out except in specific circumstances and those who are allowed have to be screened. In that way, schools are kind of run like airports.
They care because between the hours of 7am and 3pm, they're responsible for your welfare and if they let you leave and something happens to you, there might be civil or criminal liability. Parents would also be pissed, because the primary function of public schooling isn't education but daycare.
There's also the fact that if they let you out they'd also have to let you back in, and that opens a whole can of worms about random people strolling into the school or setting up a huge infrastructure to screen students returning from lunch.
Canada is a less litigious country than the US, and awards for successful lawsuits are much smaller and often capped by law. But there are still a lot of rules due to people being afraid of liability. But my high school's solution to that was that you were not allowed to hang around the school when you weren't in class. You were free to leave the property though and once you did, they were not responsible for anything that happened.
By the way, 7am? Wtf? Our school started at around 8:30 (in high school) or 9?
What do you mean when you say they screened people going in like an airport? Is there some kind of security or someone watching the door? We had nothing like that in high school. You could come and go freely and no one was tracking who was in the building. In elementary school, it was a little different, in that you'd line up once the bell rang and the teacher would escort you in, and then once inside, they'd take attendance.
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