Columnist Scott Dickensheets: Backpacks to the max

Scott Dickensheets

Sunday, Jan. 24, 1999 | 10:48 a.m.

Scott Dickensheets' column appears Tuesdays and Sundays. Reach him at 259-4082 or dickens@lasvegassun.com

You may as well know up front that this column -- about the hefty backpacks middle-school students are lugging these days -- was inspired by the son of this columnist, who totes one of the heaviest bags of books in this columnist's long experience with heavy bags of books. Thirteen pounds! This on a blonde stick of a kid who weighs in at a bantam 91 pounds. He's recently taken to pulling it around on a small, wheeled luggage cart ... whoops, forget that -- waaay uncool, pop. A kinked spine is a small price to pay to maintain your street cred.

Backpack weight is more than an academic issue. The Associated Press recently cited a Consumer Product Safety Commission estimate that "more than 3,300 children aged 5 to 14 were treated in emergency rooms last year for injuries related to bookbags." The situation is such that in that global powerhouse of learning, Thailand, the education ministry has actually imposed weight limits on book bags.

Brittany, a seventh-grade schoolmate of my son's, probably wouldn't mind that. She totes a 16-pound bag to Burkholder Middle School -- plus saxophone and lunch sack -- every day. Now, according to a recent edition of the Weekly Reader, a nationally distributed publication for students, a pack shouldn't weigh more than 1 pound per every 10 pounds of a student's body weight -- in other words, 10 percent. By that standard, Brittany's pack would be appropriate for a 160-pound kid. She weighs 83.

To be fair, some pediatricians stretch the acceptable ratio to "10 to 20 percent," according to AP. In that case, Brittany's pack comes in just under the wire: 19 percent.

The issue figures to be most acute in middle school; elementary kids stay in the same class all day, while high schoolers, puberty finally at full throttle, are presumably growing into their bags.

Still, backpack weight falls in the lower spectrum of educational concerns. If anything, the district's main book bag concern has to do with whatever weaponry, drugs or other nonbook items might be in them, district spokesman Ray Willis says.

"It's not been much of a concern this year," says Brittany's principal, Diana Chalfant of Burkholder Middle School. "We've had four or five parents this year who've said their children had back problems." A spokeswoman for the Clark County School District's health office reports hearing few complaints on the subject. None of which means it's a small issue to the kids holding the bags, or their parents.

My working assumption was that the heavy packs were necessary thanks to a shortage of lockers. You know, school overcrowding, that sort of thing. Well, not exactly. Chalfant says all sixth-graders at her school are issued lockers, and seventh- and eight-graders can request them. "Probably less than one-fourth have asked for a locker," she says.

However, as it turns out, locker availability doesn't altogether alleviate the pack mule syndrome. For one thing, you'll remember from your school daze that lockers are rarely convenient to all your classes -- my kid has to zigzag all over campus to his. Locker stops can be a logistical hassle. More important, students aren't supposed to leave items -- particularly costly textbooks -- in lockers overnight.

"We haven't told them they can't," Chalfant says. "But we discourage them." Why? Vandalism, mostly. Burkholder is an open campus, its outdoor lockers vulnerable to overnight hooliganism. Lockers get pried open, their contents thrown around or mangled. Someone once dropped matches in several lockers, she recalls.

"Textbooks cost $35 to $50 a book," Chalfant notes. "If they're taken or vandalized, it's a huge, huge expense." And not necessarily to the school district. "The student has to pay for it," Chalfant says. "Kids need to be responsible for their books. We check them out to the students and they are responsible." So, locker or not, Burkholder kids still have to lug the big bags to and from school.

It's a different story at Becker Middle School in Summerlin. Students there have two sets of texts -- one they check out and keep at home, another in class. "All the children carry with them are their notebooks and pencils, things they absolutely need in class," Principal Cathy Andrews says. (Becker established that policy not to give young backs a rest, but to ensure that kids always had a textbook at home; no "left it in my locker" excuses for missed homework.)

Dual texts is an expensive proposition, however, and although Andrews says her school managed it within its allotted budget, it's probably not feasible for many middle schools.

"We don't really foresee this spreading," Willis says of the Becker plan. Schools in affluent neighborhoods, where parent-teacher organizations can more readily raise extra cash, or schools with business partners, might find it doable. "But schools in lower-income areas might have less access to funding outside the budget."

Chalfant credits bulging backpacks to a renewed emphasis on book work and homework. "I don't know that 15 years ago, they required every student to have a book in every class," Chalfant says. She laughs. "And I think the books seem bigger than when I was in school."

And you can chalk up some of the problem to kids behaving like kids. Heather Paul, executive director of the National Safe Kids campaign, speculates in the AP dispatch that some pupils continue adding books to their bags without removing unnecessary items. "It would probably also be safe to say the taste and the status that comes with the pack is driving them to carry more of a load," she says.

Hmmm, let's see. Son, empty that bag:

1 math text

1 agenda booklet

1 thick folder of blank paper

1 heavy binder

1 set of gym clothes

1 video game magazine

1 paperback novel

1 dead tree's worth of discarded papers

2 half-empty soda bottles

As it happens, several of my son's classes don't require texts: no books for home ec, P.E. or, ironically, reading. The heavy binder substitutes for his science book. If he did have books for every class, he'd need a team of Sherpas.

The medical effects of bad packs are at best unclear.

It's not good for kids! "It typically puts them off balance and gives them a posture that promotes low back pain," says Dr. Wayne Yankus of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Committee on School Health. "A lot of kids don't suffer it immediately, but over the long run they might."

It's not bad for kids! Dr. Eric Anderson, former head of the New Hampshire Academy of Family Physicians, pens a write-in column for the Medical Tribune News Service and recently offered this advice to a parent concerned about her kids' heavy loads: Pshaw! "Curvature of the adolescent spine does not result from carrying heavy loads," he wrote.

So, what to do?

First of all, wear the darn thing properly. Slinging the pack insouciantly over one shoulder may exude cool, but physicians say heavier bags should be worn with both straps, the bag riding up toward the shoulders instead of against the lower back.

If it's still a problem, talk to the principal. "An appeal to the principal is the logical place to start," Willis says. "And the principal would probably already have remedies in place."

In the handful of cases where parents have complained to Chalfant about their kids' back strain, she's assembled a second set of texts -- the student keeps one at home and the other in the classroom. "Ideally, that's what I'd do -- if I could afford it."

Despite my son's distaste for it, there's always the totally uncool wheeled cart. "Some of our kids (use them)," Chalfant says. "Not a lot. I'd say 20 or 30 kids on our campus use them."

Then again, maybe we're examining this heavy sack question from the wrong angle. What if it's less an actual problem than a sign of things going right. After all, we send our kids to school for book-learnin' -- maybe they ought to be loaded down with books. Many, many books; volumes of volumes. Maybe they ought to need little red wagons to haul all the books they're going to need to learn all the stuff they'll have to know to whomp those kids from Thailand in the competitive global marketplace of tomorrow.

Anyway, they'd better get used to it. It doesn't get any better as you get older, because it turns out I'm not entirely right about the big kids growing into their packs.

"My 15-year-old will tell you you should go to a high school," Andrews says. "You ain't weighed anything until you've weighed their books!"

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