Burdensome education

A new school year is here! Lugging heavy bags to school have become an integral part of school life.

Check that bag
Children between the ages of 6 and 14 are typically in their formative ages. At this stage the body's vital organs are not fully developed and are therefore more vulnerable to injury. The heavy book load that children are subjected to carry lead to physical stress and poor posture, which may have repercussions on spine health.

Dr S. P. Mandal, senior consultant, department of orthopaedics, Sir Gangaram Hospital reveals the health hazards of lugging heavy backpack. He expresses, “Heavy backpacks affect your child's health in many ways. The pressure of the belt in the bag presses the vital structure of shoulder and neck, due to which in the long term can cause muscle fatigue and neurovascular embarrassment.”

“Ideally for a ten-year-old child the weight of school bag should not exceed beyond two to three kilos”, advises he.

Tips to load-off

• Encourage your children to check their timetable carefully to minimize the load to be carried.
• Your child's school should provide lockers as a storage space to lighten the load.
• Help your child to avoid countless bulky books, which make your child's load too heavy.
• Keep a set of textbooks, which can be shared by groups of students.
• Provision of safe drinking water and hygienic food in the school canteen instead of allowing them to carry these from home.
• Also encourage your child's teachers to plan ahead and inform students when texts are not required for lessons so that they are not carrying unnecessary loads.

Some schools like Excelsior American School, Gurgaon believe in the philosophy of going ‘bag-less’. Parents need to help the school in this effort and Shalini Nambiar, Director of Excelsior American School, Gurgaon, gives some advice in this regard— “Check that backpack on a regular basis. They are typically full of unnecessary items. ... I think if you went through the backpacks, you could shed 10 pounds just like that.”

“Isn't school a place to study and home a place for parents to spend quality time? I often have parents insisting on homework but one needs to give this keeping the age of the child in mind. Homework should be re-enforcement of what is being done in school and if it is well planned then children don’t need to carry loads of books back home,” she adds.