I was just visited a school for parent teacher meeting. I waited there for some time. I found the walking style of all children are not normal and all of them are walking more bending towards their front with the school bag in their back. When I enquired about this, I found that their school bags are heavier than the normal weight a person can carry without any pain.
When we discussed about this issue with school teachers, they given several reasons.
- School books are heavier
- They need to check the school notes in every period. So all notes to be brought to school
- Children are carrying around 1 litre of water
- School routines are designed as such they are covering all subjects everyday
And what about solutions, they do not have any. Is it not a torchure by our education system towards our little children. So many children complaint about back pain, shoulder pain and so much due to the heavy weight of school bags. Why there is no mention about maximum weight of school bags whenever a National Policy on Education is formed?
If you do not have a solution, we are suggesting possible solution which we think will definitely work.
Lets say in class 6 there are 10 books. Most of them are around 200 to 300 pages. Instead of having 10 books, if we increase the number of books from 10 to 30. I am not saying add additional subjects or reference books, rather divide each book to parts each comprising around 100 or less pages. In this way, the students need not required to carry the other two parts of the book. In this way their bag weight will be reduced to one third. This isn’t possible without proper instructions of the higher authority of education regarding guidelines of printing school books.
Second, instead of having heavy binded notes, we can have small amount of papers for each subjecta. The children need to fill their class work on those individual papers and which they can attach with their respective subject note file later. Or we can also implement to use small size note books. This will help in reducing the size of notes
Thirdly, forget about mid day meal, is our education system so poor that it cannot provide pure hygienic water to all children in the schools
There are many ways to improve the condition of our school going children. Its our turn to give some relief to our children from this physical torchure.