RIYADH: Ahlam Al-Hamad, an eight-year-old elementary schoolgirl from a public school in Riyadh, shares the physical burden of being weighed down with 10 kgs of books. The heavy backpack she has to carry every day contains a lot of books and many things that are necessary for class.
Ahlam and her friends, express that it is too heavy to the extent that they try to drag it all the way to the class.
“My mother bought me a bag with small wheels so that can pull it because I used to carry a very heavy backpack and I got an injury. The doctor told my mother that I should not carry that weight on my back,” Ahlam said.
Yara Alem, 10, said that they do not have a fixed schedule so they have to carry all books with them.
“Sometimes teachers tell us in advance what and what not to bring, but most of the time we bring everything in case we have a sudden change in schedule,” Yara said. “We have nine periods a day and I carry 13 books in my backpack. Even if they are too heavy we have to bring them all.”
Schoolteachers, especially public ones, expect students to bring more that one notebook to the class. Students in early school years have to bring the main book, the workbook, a notebook for writing down important points and another notebook to write the extra homework. If children have six classes a day and they have to bring four books for each one that would make it 24 books that vary in their weight.
School lockers have been proposed, and promptly rejected out of concern they would be misused by students and would be costly to install. From a medical prospective, heavy backpacks carried by young students raise concerns about how it would affect them on the long run.
“Children carrying heavy bags to school could endanger them, and expose them to future spinal injury,” said Maha Al-Saleh, physiotherapist. “A backpack that is too heavy can cause injuries to its carrier. Though some of these injuries may be temporary, they can also cause more permanent problems.”
She added that the most important thing to know about preventing back injuries for schoolchildren is to never have children carry backpacks that are more than 10 to 15 percent of their body weight.
