A regular scene in the morning is school children carrying heavy schoolbags on their delicate shoulders. The sight of small children (including mine) struggling to carry such a heavy weight worried me and triggered me to weigh the bags carried by my children daily. My daughter is in grade nine and she carries around 10 to 12kg of weight on her shoulders in addition to the extra big books that she carries in her hand. My son, in grade six, carries around eight to nine kilograms of bag weight daily. So, if I look from a scientific point, the weight they carry is nearly 20 per cent of their respective weight. According to medical experts, the maximum weight a child should carry is 10 per cent of their body weight, including all things like their water bottle and lunchbox.
Now, thinking from a logical point, do they need to carry this weight to school? This can only cause deterioration in studies due to developing back and posture problems. Children lose interest in going to school with the stress of carrying heavy bags. Their mind is burdened with the weight of the books and this leads to low attention span. Heavy school bags are ‘deforming’ children as growing numbers suffer irreversible back problems.
Children’s skeletons are still growing, so carrying heavy bags can cause lasting damage. On reaching home, back from school, my daughter started crying out of shoulder and back pain. If they are getting back pain so young, then there is the potential that they will have it for the rest of their lives, which leads to an enormous physical and emotional cost. I took my daughter to a doctor who took the x-ray and found an abnormal curve of the spine due to the heavy bag that she carries daily. I am really saddened by this.
As a solution, children can be partially relieved with a trolley bag. However, handling the heavy trolley bag while using staircases on a daily basis is again a painful job. Some schools have banned trolleys, because they are noisy. They can cause permanent trails on the floor and can injure students when the halls are crowded. Schools teach a number of lessons, but when it comes to exercising methods to reduce the weight of bags, somewhere it looks like schools have a determination not to allow this. I would strongly suggest the schools to adhere to some basic health and safety practices.
It is important that they understand the gravity of this situation before it is too late. I wish the Ministry of Education or the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) consider this matter seriously.
- The reader is a chief executive officer based in Dubai.
