Load Free School Bags

To ease the growing burden of school bags, governments and various boards keep coming up with solutions to reduce the load. The Ministry of HRD recently issued a guideline prescribing weight of bag for students of different classes. According to the guidelines, class I and II  children are supposed to  carry weight not more than 1.5 kg. During a survey, in most cases it was found that this was just the weight of bag, forget the weight of books, notebooks, workbooks, tiffin and water bottle. On weighing the text books for these two classes, it was found that for class I and II was 1.5 and 1.6 kg, respectively.

The case was no different for class II and IV, text books of these classes are more or less same ranging between 2 to 3.2 kg. for class V and VI, fixed weight and books weight are same, but students does not carry just the books.

To save the students from back breaking load, the government is made a norm that a child should not carry more than 10% of their weight. It was found that there was angular changes in spine which are not good in long run.

Unnecessary extras add to the bag weight

Believe it or not, children have their own world and bag is their sacred space to store their precious stuff. During surprise checks at schools,a plethora of items were found in the bag which were not required according to the educators. Extra books, art materials, sports kit, guitar, tution notes and reference materials etc were found which are not required in schools. Further, sometimes students carry deodorant, mobile phone, comb and bands, fancy pens, story books, DVDs, huge colour boxes etc. Parents also don’t check the bags of their children on regular basis.

Parents also have another perspective that carrying books as per time table, the kids carry extra books in fear of being scolded. Some students also carry laptop to school for gaming during breaks and some times for school projects, besides they also carry hard discs to exchange games and movies. This is also because of to show off their stuff, which could be due to peer pressure or a wish to do something without knowledge of their parents and teachers.

Matter Referenced:  Times of India, Ahmedabad, Monday, 14th January, 2019.

By: Dr. Bhawana Asnani.

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