I need more information about your username. Is it the trebuchet that acts as a taxi, as in you sit on it and drives along, or is a trebuchet service, where it uses its primary function to yeet you to your destination?
If the kids had been older, I wouldn’t have much of a problem with this.
Yeah, I feel like people commenting didn’t read the article, there kids as young as 5 years old just… left by the side of the road.
If you imagine this being done to high schoolers, it’d be easier to wrap your head around (although even then the fact that he ditched everyone on the entire bus is a bit insane). But just, leaving a 5-year old by the side of the road?
Even if it’s 17 year olds, the amount of liability you expose the school/municipality to is massive.
Absolutely, it’d be a stupid and irresponsible thing to do, but, people do stupid and irresponsible stuff all the time. Sometimes you can imagine yourself making such a mistake, or at least, understand the mental process that led to it.
In this case, though, it’s a bit beyond that.
kids as young as 5 years old just… left by the side of the road
I’m a school bus driver in the US and here you’re not even allowed to unload kids that young at their actual stop unless there’s an adult there waiting to take them. Doing this shit here would get you fired for sure and possibly arrested.
Imagine you, as an adult, are riding a bus and a handful of crazy people are acting like assholes so the driver makes all of you get off the bus, potential miles from where you live. I don’t think this would be ok even with older people. Plus there’s the fact that we don’t even know how bad the misbehavior was. Unless every single one were causing a significant danger, there’s no reason to kick them off.
If you can’t handle 5-10 year olds, then maybe don’t have a job driving them to and from school?
This comments section makes me sick. Kids are fucking kids. They don’t “behave”— they’re just trying to enjoy life, they’re just reacting how they know, and they’re still learning. You don’t dump five-year-olds on the side of the road where they almost get hit by cars (that was part of the news article).
This also sounds like a great way to go to prison with a lot of parents extremely angry at you.
they’re just trying to enjoy life
Maybe. A neighborhood bully went after me with a makeshift whip around that age. I lost my boot in the snow trying to run away fast enough. Most people are fine as you say. Some…are just broken.
You don’t dump five-year-olds on the side of the road
Strongly agree here. I don’t care what they were doing; they’re still kids in need of adult supervision.
100% don’t do this. It’s wrong.
Separate conversation: folks we rely on don’t have the support or tools to do their jobs safely and sanely. Kids are violent and beyond “unruly”.
I’m not suggesting I have an answer, I’m not suggesting dumping them was appropriate. I’m not suggesting “things were better in the good old days”.
I am suggesting something has evolved in society, (many suggest norms degraded with COVID isolation, maybe. Discuss.) to make these provider’s jobs harder, and many are so close to snapping we as society should recognize it, and help them.
While not at the side of the road, where I’m from bus drivers have the right to throw anyone out at a bus station because there aren’t school buses per se. Although this is reserved for particularly rowdy individuals, I can’t imagine any bus driver emptying the entire bus. Definitely shitty & possibly dangerous thing to do.
You have a fundamental lack of understanding of child development. This is why we were abused as kids.
For so many goddamned reasons— especially if you don’t know anything about the kids— the word “behave” in this usage should not be allowed in adult usage. All it does is perpetuate harmful and false beliefs about children.
At the same time, there is clearly a need to show that actions have consequences and that if you break rules you’re punished for it. If the driver pulled into an abandoned parking lot and made them deboard in nice weather and stand there for 15 minutes before resuming, that would be fair. As adults it’s on us to guide children, and that means reinforcing good actions and discouraging bad actions – escalating to punishment if they keep acting out.
I agree with you that the person you’re responding to is being absurd. Punishment has to be carefully done. You need to create a situation that is undesirable but has absolutely no danger to their health nor wellbeing. Is that difficult? Yes. But that’s why we’re the adults.
The school should have worked with the driver much earlier to address the situation, before it escalated to this point. Even adults can only take so much, but it’s still on us to not lose control.
kids are much much more dangerous than adults.
kids just love to kill
kittens, puppies, just something to smack and smash flr a normal kid
What the hell was your experience with children? Or are you a psychopath, and you’re just projecting it?
Do gen-x era bus drivers now live in Australia, that is a Gen X move right there! Misbehave and you walk.
I could see gen-z do it too. They give no fucks, since the world is ending anyway and none of us are rich enough to buy our way into politics and do something about it.
That was a form of detention for us. They’d keep us until the buses had left, then let us go. We had the choice of walking home or phoning our parents. I did a lot of walking in the '70s.
My bus driver left if you didn’t make it on time. I say bus, but they were really just vans (Opel/Vauxhall Vivaro I believe) fitted to carry people, because it was a small school and we were all spread out on the countryside. We didn’t even call it a bus, it was “school taxi.”
My mother didn’t have a car or driver’s license, and no buses went anywhere near where we lived. There were a few occasions where I did miss the bus, so I had to walk home. Looking at Google Maps it says it’s only about a two hour walk. I recall it happening in the winter though, lots of snow, and me being fairly young (around 9 I think) I didn’t get home until half past nine in the evening haha.
We had a bus driver who’d drive away if he had already closed the doors, regardless of if he could see you running for the bus or if other students would tell him someone was coming.
Smug little prick used to whistle like a fucking 1950s Disney character while he did it, too.
