By Jim Roha

My Irish grandfather was the oldest of eight children, and he walked to school. In 1889, Dan Caddahan quit school at the age of 15 and went to work for the Erie Railroad as an engine wiper to help support his brothers and sisters. Over the years, he was promoted to the position of machine shop foreman, from which he retired after 57 years of service.

Uncle Edgar was a physician. He walked to school, too. With a high school diploma, he was able to enroll in medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned his M.D. degree. He practiced medicine here in Meadville for more than half a century.

My Uncle Ed was a dentist. He walked to school and completed the eighth grade, then worked as a streetcar conductor before fighting in the Spanish American War. Afterward, he attended University of Pittsburgh Dental School, graduating in 1904.

When my mother first became a legal secretary (she walked to school, too) she worked for an attorney who shared office space with a lawyer named Captain Jimmy Smith. Captain Smith was a Civil War veteran who never went to college or law school. As a kid, he probably walked to school. But as a young man, he “read law” in the offices of another lawyer and ultimately gained enough experience to hang out his shingle without the benefit of a long, expensive education.

Those were simpler times. Captain Smith drew deeds and wills by hand. Uncle Ed never heard of gingivitis. Dentistry was drill, fill and pull. Uncle Edgar was nearly 50 years old before penicillin was developed. DNA hadn’t been discovered until he was in the twilight years of his practice. And sleep apnea and peripheral artery disease were terms that couldn’t be found in any medical text.

So when some old geezer brags about how he walked 12 miles to school — barefoot; uphill both ways; through five feet of snow; and carrying his brother and sister on his back — just remember that he lived in a different world. For more than two centuries, America enjoyed a frontier economy. As our nation expanded southward and westward, the demand for human labor was so great that high school dropouts became bank presidents. High school graduates could become certified public accountants, and professional degrees were conferred without the benefit of a college education. That’s how it was.

In the good old days, if some kid got tired of walking to school, he could drop out and get a job in any of a dozen union shops and enjoy a career with a living wage and benefits, and a company pension at the end of the line.

That was yesteryear. Let’s talk about tomorrow.

In 1850 there were about 1.17 billion people on this planet (www.vaughns-1-pagers.com). There are nearly seven billion people today.

The quantum of knowledge assimilated by mankind to date is nearly one thousand times greater than that which existed when my Uncle Ed was born in 1878. That’s a lot of human learning. Uncle Ed had time to walk to school. My grandchildren don’t.

Our grandchildren will be competing against seven times as many people as my ancestors faced — on a planet whose land mass and oxygen supply levels haven’t changed for millions of years. Our grandchildren will need the skills to assimilate new learning at a phenomenal rate, because researchers say that the body of human knowledge doubles every 18 moths or so. Walking to school does not develop those analytical and assimilative skills.

Environmentalists preach about the use of finite resources. Time and public education dollars are finite resources. Kids can spend seven hours in school and two hours walking — and it’s pretty difficult to do trigonometry problems or balance chemical equations while strolling down a snowy sidewalk. Or they can spend seven hours in school and have the opportunity to do homework while riding the bus. Which is a better use of time?

School boards can invest public dollars providing transportation for all students, or they can “save” a few thousand busing dollars while administrators waste those same dollars (and more) dollars on their expense accounts. “Business” lunches, hotel accommodations and conference fees don’t prepare your children to meet tomorrow, do they?

Some folks believe that forcing poor kids to walk to 1.9 miles to school (affluent kids get to ride buses because they live in the suburbs) will engender good health. That is a simple-minded belief, reminiscent of the “bad blood” theories of social inferiority espoused by 19th-century sociologists.