The perennial heavy school bag

These simple problem of heavy school bags is one of my pet peeves with our school system. I had wanted to blog about it last week. I even snapped a photo off the early morning hard copy of the ST. In the end I decided against writing because I didn't think it would be useful.

The government doesn't seem keen to solve this problem. Ironically by the time the kids are tall and strong, the heavy textbooks also disappear. My girl in JC has no textbooks. Everything is printed in loose notes for them.

I remember how in our vary active PSG in primary school we discussed this issue ad nausem. We concluded we can't solve this without the MOE driving this. So I bought my kids the most advanced ergonomic school bags available, leading many other parents to buy the same. They were expensive. Very sorry if you can't afford it. That's an early lesson for the younglings on the wealth gap. I was unhappy but there is nothing we could do.

Years later when the iPad came out, I decided we can solve this problem completely ourselves. I bought iPads for my children and scan all their major copies into the tablets. Guess what? When some teachers in school saw it, they wanted the soft copy, but my kids say no. This should have been done properly and not by some back lane arrangement. I can foresee how much trouble for us this could lead to. Doesn't it prove that a permanent solution must come from the MOE?