I have not stopped thinking about this photo since I stumbled upon it while scrolling Twitter. It comes from a study done where pre-adolescent children were evaluated on their cognitive ability before and after 20 minutes of moderate exercise on a treadmill. The results were interesting, to say the least:
“Results indicated an improvement in response accuracy…and better performance on the academic achievement test following aerobic exercise relative to the resting session.”
On a personal level, the results of the study make sense. Taking a walk longer than 5 minutes gives the brain time to fire up, and thoughts become more expansive and luminary after a certain point in the walk.
Growing up, I was fortunate to live within walking distance of my elementary, junior high, and high schools. Walking to school provided my brother, our neighbors, and myself 20-30 minutes to “warm up” our brains by talking, listening to music, or just being alone with our thoughts. Although an absurd school schedule meant we were still sleepy when the first-period bell rang at 7:10 in the morning, our brains were activated to be prepared for the cognitive challenges presented by the school.
However, that is not the case for most kids in the United States. According to a National Travel Household Travel Survey, only 11% of school-aged children walk to school. While 11% is an abysmally low figure, it is not surprising. The way our schools and the surrounding built environment are designed today essentially forces kids to either take the bus or be driven by a parent until they reach their 16th birthday — when they can start driving to school. Let’s take a look at my high school as a case study:
Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Sterling Heights, Michigan is a quintessential post-war suburban high school. When you’re walking through the halls you could trick yourself you were back in 1973 if it were not for the air pods the students wear in between classes. But besides the late 20th-century aesthetic, the school is also designed around a 20th-century landscape built to serve the car. Stevenson’s parking lots and car infrastructure have a larger footprint (32,005 yards2) than the building itself (31,067 yards2). The school also serves students across Macomb County, some driving over 15 miles to get to school. Between these two factors, it is no surprise that Stevenson’s entire existence revolves around the car.
But there are a lot of students who live nearby! The school is surrounded by a sea of housing, there should be plenty of students who walk or bike to school. Unless things have drastically changed in the last 4 years, the school culture was that once you got to Junior year, you got your parking permit and drove to school, I partook in the culture, and even if I lived relatively close to the school, everyone else did as well. There is a parking lot as large as the school itself, might as well use it. This leads to the second, and more compelling reason in my opinion, as to why students do not walk to school. It is a lonely, uncomfortable, and dangerous endeavor. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you are a principled environmentalist anti-car high schooler, and you decide to walk to school. Stevenson is a manageable walking distance away, so getting to school on time is not a huge factor. This is your path:
Your first challenge is that you will likely be the only one walking from your neighborhood, which even if you like the solitude, presents a security risk, it is much more difficult to access someone in distress from inside a fast-moving car compared to being on foot. You need to maintain situational awareness of cars and others walking along the street.
Second, the walk to school is a pretty unpleasant one. This is what most of the walk looks like:
A monoculture landscape of crabgrass, asphalt, and an alternating set of three models of single-family houses. On this route, the only buildings you will pass that are not housing are churches and other schools in the district, nothing that provides a break in the monotony of suburbia. This makes the dark and cold early morning winter walks worse than they already are.
Finally, and I believe the most important point, is that by choosing to walk to school, you are putting yourself at a higher risk of getting hurt. Existing outside of a car in this environment is rare, so drivers are not always paying attention to pedestrians or cyclists. The surrounding roads have speed limits of 35 miles per hour, but drivers often go 5-10 miles per hour faster. A Triple A study found that higher car speeds are more likely to seriously injure or kill pedestrians.
“Results show that the average risk of severe injury for a pedestrian struck by a vehicle reaches 10% at an impact speed of 16 mph, 25% at 23 mph, 50% at 31 mph, 75% at 39 mph, and 90% at 46 mph. The average risk of death for a pedestrian reaches 10% at an impact speed of 23 mph, 25% at 32 mph, 50% at 42 mph, 75% at 50 mph, and 90% at 58 mph.”
In fact, it has already happened at Stevenson. In 2019 a student broke their pelvis crossing Dodge Park Road after being hit by a car. These are the risks you take if you choose not to take a car to school. Given all of these challenges on top of the car culture of the school, it is anything but surprising that little to no students walk to school.
Schools are an easy target to increase walkability. Allowing students to walk to school will prepare them for the school day and lessen the strain on the local transportation system. But the photo I began this piece with shows us how much walking can improve every aspect of our lives. We should not limit our imagination to just schools. It should not just be the students who walk to school. It should also be the teachers, the parents, and everyone else in the community. You should be able to walk to work, the grocery store, the bar, the movie theater, and every other local amenity. If we build walkable communities, we can let our brains run wild while we walk.