Text 1: Teaching ten-year-olds to ride on real roads, by Amira Holt

An original contemporary online feature.

Every summer term I spend three days with each Year 6 class at the primary schools in our town, teaching children to cycle safely on the road. Most of them can already ride; very few have ever ridden anywhere except a park.

Day one is in the playground. We check every bike first, and a surprising number have brakes that barely work or tyres as soft as marshmallows. Then the children practise the basics until they are automatic: starting off, stopping in a straight line, looking over their right shoulder without wobbling, and taking one hand off to signal.

On days two and three we go out onto quiet residential roads in small groups, three instructors to six children, everyone in a bright yellow vest. They learn where to position themselves, how to pass a parked car and how to turn right at a junction, which frightens nearly everyone the first time.

Not everybody passes. A few children are simply not ready, and we tell parents honestly. But most finish with a badge and, more importantly, a sense that the road is somewhere they are allowed to be. One boy told me it was the first time an adult had trusted him with traffic.

Text 2: A diary of the bicycle, by Florence Daintree

An original diary written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

In this diary, written in 1895, a young woman records learning to ride the new ‘safety’ bicycle at a riding school in London.

April 3rd. My first lesson at the cycling school in the Brompton Road, which is a long, bare hall with a floor of polished boards. Papa still declares that bicycling is unwomanly, but Aunt Clementina has paid for six lessons and he cannot well refuse her.

The instructor, a lean young man in knickerbockers, buckled a broad leather belt round my waist, with a handle at the back like a portmanteau, and held on by it while I pedalled. Every time he let go, I swerved into the wall. My divided skirt caught in the chain twice and I fell once, very hard, upon my elbow, before a whole gallery of ladies waiting their turn.

April 10th. Better. I can mount alone, by pushing off with one foot from the step, and I rode six times round the hall without his hand upon the belt. He says I grip the handles as though they owed me money.

April 24th. My first ride in the street, with Aunt Clementina riding beside me. Two errand boys shouted after us, and a cabman told me to go home and mind the baby. I did not fall, and I did not answer him, and I came home glowing. I mean to have a machine of my own by June.

Using information from both texts, explain briefly how people were taught to ride bicycles.

You should make it clear which text you are referring to.