A solution to problem of extra heavy school bags

By Anton Peiris 

B.Sc. (Ceylon), PGCE (Kenya), M.Sc. (London), DAES (York) and Emeritus Coordinator, International Baccalaureate, Switzerland.

(‘Reduce O/LevelSTRESS’ – continued)

Extra Heavy Schoolbags carried by school children and the setting of homework

Dr. B.J.C. Perera (Specialist Consultant Paediatrician) has said, “Students, even little children, are forced to carry large numbers of books in their schoolbags, to and from school, every day. The deleterious health effects of carrying improperly loaded and very heavy school bags are another associated problem”.   It is not difficult to solve this problem.

(i)  Install a set of lockers (with at least one shelf inside) preferably in close proximity to the classrooms. Lockers can be made of wood or metal, approximately 20 X 15 X 15 inches or 30 X 10 X 15 inches. i.e. about 4500 cubic inches per student. Allocate a Locker to each student.

(ii)  The teachers should set Homework a maximum of twice per week (i.e. 2 X 20 minutes per week) in mathematics and only once per week (maximum of 30 minutes) in any other subject , making sure that a student gets no more than a total of approximately one hour of homework per day, Some subjects require homework only once a fortnight.

Some subjects do not require any homework at all. This can be done if the Deputy School Principal and the Class Teacher get together and use their ingenuity to produce a practical Home-Work Timetable for the class that allows the setting of homework only for a maximum of two subjects per day.    

Here’s the underlying principle behind this: If a teacher does a good job of teaching in class and if he makes the students work in class, then the students need very little or no homework at all. 

During my 40 years as an O/Level mathematics teacher, I have given them only 20 minutes of homework per night twice a week and sometimes no homework at all. They did well in their O/Level mathematics exam because the bulk of the work was done in class during the five years of preparation for the O/Level exams. I taught them well and I made them work maths problems in class. Some of them obtained As (distinctions) in mathematics. 

There should be no homework set in any subject for the weekend. The students will then have time to play, to climb a tree, to go swimming, to go on trips with their parents, to devote some time for their extra-curricular activities (CAS), attend Daham Paasela, etc., during the weekends.  

The foregoing is for Grades 6 – 11 only. (Obviously, there should be some homework set for the weekend for GCE A/L students).

If the schools adhere to the Homework Timetable given above, then the students in Grades 6 – 11 will be able to leave more than half of their text books in their Lockers every day because homework has been set only in one or two subjects per day. The weight of the schoolbag will be reduced automatically by more than 50%.  They will be able to keep a few other things (e. g. swimming trunk, umbrella) also in their lockers. 

If that method of allocation of homework and the use of lockers works well in Europe, the UK, Australia and Canada, why not in Sri Lanka?

Lockers should have padlocks because, when they lose their locker key, the padlock can be cut off in two seconds with a three feet long metal cutter. Each locker should have either a metal or a hard-plastic number plate fixed on its door. Lockers can be made in units (e. g.  20 or 25 lockers per unit). Most schools need additional space to keep the lockers. The Ministry of Education should provide the necessary funds to the schools to procure the additional space and to install the lockers. It is an investment on the health of the population. Nobody wants our students to grow up into adults having back problems and damaged spinal columns. The important thing is to make a start NOW by providing lockers to about 50 pilot schools. 

It is the duty of the Private Schools and the International Schools also to provide Lockers for their students.

(To be continued)

Next instalment: The Problem of Tuition Classes.

The writer has taught O/L, A/L and IB mathematics and physics for 45 years in Sri Lanka, Kenya and Switzerland.)