Waiting for the School Bus

In the picture, a group of primary school students is waiting at a covered bus stop outside an HDB block. They are wearing their school uniforms with their bags on their backs, and one of them is holding an umbrella, which suggests it has been raining or may rain soon. The light is bright but the shadows are long, so it appears to be early morning before school. What I also noticed is that they are standing together in a group, so they probably take the same bus every day.

I take the bus to school and it is about a fifteen-minute ride, but I have to leave the house by half past six to be sure of getting a seat. My friend from the block opposite waits at the same stop, so we usually go together and finish whatever homework talk we did not manage the day before. When it rains, the bus is much more crowded because people who normally walk take it instead. Once we missed it entirely and had to wait twelve minutes for the next one, which felt like an hour.

I feel students should learn to travel on their own, but it depends on the child and the route. Travelling alone teaches independence, planning and how to handle small problems such as a missed bus, and these are things a child cannot learn while being driven to the gate. However, safety matters, so a very young child or one crossing several busy roads may need company at first. That is why I believe the sensible approach is to practise the route together a few times, and then let the child do it alone.