However, this teacher was also aware that some of her students experienced great difficulty in learning how to ride a bicycle. Especially those who were overweight or poorly coordinated had difficulty in overcoming the physical and psychic barriers that initially confront all bicycle riders. Being a caring teacher, she worked extra hard with these students, running behind them, shouting words of encouragement, and holding onto their bicycles until she dared let go. However, her classes were large, and even these efforts did not always succeed.
Then one day she had the idea of crafting some training wheels. With these extra wheels she was able to work with several students at a time, providing them with a feel for what bicycle riding is like - but without the fear of falling. Gradually, these students were willing to try riding with smaller and smaller supports, until they too enjoyed the exhilaration that goes with relying on one's own sense of balance to keep the bicycle upright. And once this barrier was overcome, they were able to develop other skills in bicycle riding.
Seeing the success that this innovative teacher was having, other teachers (some of whom were somewhat uncomfortable on bicycles themselves) began using training wheels in their classes. No longer did they have to run after individual students struggling with their fears and insecurities. Instead, they could send out groups of students with the expectation that they too were developing skills that would help them become successful bicycle riders.
However, these early training wheels were small and did not preclude all mishaps. An engineering firm, Consumer Mechanical Products, chastised the schools for exposing children to such hazards and offered to develop training wheels that would make the school's bicycles substantially more stable. The development of these new wheels was to be quite expensive, however, and CMP's costs were difficult to justify for the small percentage of students that required training wheels. Pointing to the importance of making the joys of bicycle riding accessible to ALL students, CMP convinced the schools that ALL students should learn to ride using the safe new wheels that they proposed to develop.
Gradually CMP training wheels began arriving at the schools. Unfortunately, they had grown substantially in weight and size over those the teachers had been using. Even worse, they were very difficult to attach and remove. As a result, many teachers found themselves teaching bicycle riding with CMP's training wheels attached at all times. Some of them were trained as "leaders" to help other teachers with this new form of instruction. The most capable of the leaders, carefully selected by CMP, also began raising a new generation of young teachers who have never even considered the possibility of teaching children to ride two-wheeled bicycles. Instead, eloquent pamphlets were distributed among parents and other members of community that demonstrated the advantages of "new new system" of bike training. These pamphlets contained impressive statistics documenting the rate at which students were now progressing equitably toward a transition to the automobile. Four-wheeled bicycle riding had become the key to enabling ALL students become productive members of society.
Cycling enthusiasts complained that these newly augmented bikes failed to provide children with the skills that bicycle riding should develop. CMP responded by arguing that it is locomotion, rather than balancing atop a two-wheeled demon, that is the object of bicycle riding. At the same time CMP unveiled a new catalog describing a line of streamers, horns, bells and whistles that could be attached to the four-wheelers now so common in the schools. With such devices, the catalog asserted, quadricycle riding would provide ALL children with a uniquely enriching and empowering experience.
And so the schools progressed for over a decade, To be sure, some students had access to two-wheeled cycles of their own, while others sensed that something was wrong with the four-wheeled devices the schools provided. To accommodate these students, some teachers took the risk of removing the school's training wheels on special occasions. However, such actions were frowned upon by CMP and by teacher leaders who had become irreconcilably opposed to any other form of bicycle instruction.
So it went until one day a foreign circus came to town. Not only were there clowns riding bicycles backwards and acrobats riding bicycles across high-wires. There were also children of all ages riding unicycles! This scene brought tears to the eyes of the teacher who had first used training wheels at her school. She decided something had to be done.
With the help of a shop teacher, she is learning to attach motors to the school's quadricycles, hoping a local country club might buy some of them for use as golf carts. She also hopes to sell some to the school's driver training program. Her goal is to recover enough of the school's funds to buy shiny new mountain bikes for her classes.
But for now she can only dream of running with her students again, shouting words of encouragement and sharing with them the exhilaration that the bicycle's seeming defiance of the laws of gravity affords. She does not know if her dream may become a reality, but just in case she practices every morning, balanced atop her sleek two-wheeled bicycle.