Text book weight harmful to children

AMONG all the discussion of gridlock caused by the school run, and of growing obesity rates among the young, there is no mention of the weight of school bags.

I recently weighed our 15-year-old son’s schoolbag. When he had removed all the books he thought he might be able to manage without, the bag weighed 21lbs. He weighs 140lbs and should carry no more than 10% of his own body weight — that is, 14lbs. His bag regularly weighs between 19lbs and 26lbs — and he suffers from intermittent back pain.

Walking or cycling any distance with such weights is dangerous. Every parent or guardian knows that books nowadays are extremely heavy and, at secondary level, each book often contains three years of coursework. The result is that every text book and associated workbook are now the weight of the sort of reference book which years ago would have reposed in a library.

A child who has six to eight classes a day may well be transporting on his or her back the equivalent of six to eight copies of a Collins Concise English Dictionary, which weighs 3lbs 14oz.

I appeal to Education Minister Mary Hanafin to instruct school text book publishers to end the practice of putting three years’ material in one book.

It is not an economy when it is contributing to the destruction of our children’s backs — and please don’t come back to us with tired and useless injunctions such as to ‘plan homework better’ or ‘photocopy materials in advance’.

The allocation of homework is already as reasonable as teachers can make it. The real problem is the outrageous weight of the text books.

Nuala Norris

Farranacoush

Sherkin Island

Skibbereen

Co Cork