Lighten the backpacks of schoolchildren: fathers from Central Asia acted wisest of all

“My daughter herself weighs 22 kg, and her school bag weighs almost 6!” – the spears around the weight of the daily burden of schoolchildren, especially the youngest ones, break with particular force in the first month of the new school year, while boys and girls, as well as their parents, have not yet been pulled into the school quagmire. Dangerous in the sense of “a friend’s elbow in the side”: everyone in the class wears it, but is yours more frail than others? Of course, no one wants to be “the sickest of all,” but they also want to get rid of luggage that is harmful to the child’s health. We have collected life hacks from parents who can lighten their child’s burden without conflicting with the school.

It is curious that ways to halve the backpack without making complaints to specialized institutions, without getting a medical discharge for the child, and without even quarreling with the teacher, were invented mainly by parents from Central Asia, whose children went to Russian schools.

“We have a saying: “The donkey’s mind is small so that it gets used to heavy luggage,” Said, the father of a Moscow first-grader originally from Central Asia, begins with a popular saying. – I see my little son can barely lift his backpack with what he needs every day in first grade. What will happen then by the 11th? I talked to the teacher, and she told me that girls wear clothes and don’t complain, but in your fairy tales, it seems like you have heroes, and raise a boy to be a sissy. Well, I’ll free him from the class from some of the textbooks, physically it will become easier for him. But morally harder: others will laugh at him! And how will it become for you – better or worse?

According to this father, after such words from his son’s first teacher, a school teacher with 30 years of experience, he began to think deeply.

“There are arguments, but only in order to formally download the rights,” Said explains his train of thought. – You don’t even have to complain anywhere, just open the website of Rospotrebnadzor and SanPina (Sanitary and epidemiological requirements for the conditions and organization of education in educational institutions) to the teacher. Author), which indicates the maximum permissible weight of a school backpack for each age. But the teacher, of course, will be angry. You put yourself in her place. In order to properly teach our children according to the program, it is necessary for the children to have a certain set of supplies in the classroom. And she won’t wear it all for them herself! It’s just stupid to swear, you need to offer your own version. And the teacher will not refuse him, since she herself knows very well that children’s backpacks are much heavier than the numbers in the law.

Said gathered the fathers of his class and led a delegation of eastern popes straight to the teacher, where they suggested that over the weekend she build lockers in the classroom where children could leave textbooks and other items that are always needed only in the classroom or are not needed at home at this particular time day. And in order to avoid fears for the property, which the teacher was just about to voice, the lockers will have keys, and the keys will be stored in the teacher’s desk so that the first-graders do not lose them.

– Ours agreed immediately! – Said is proud. – And also people from other classes came running to envy. This is, indeed, convenient, but it does not put any of the children in a special position. We will make lockers for our class free of charge; the child’s health is more expensive. But the money is not so expensive that parents interested in making life easier for their children at school cannot chip in for it. The work costs 2-3 thousand, and if you divide it between the parents of a class of 30 people, it’s absolutely ridiculous. But some people find it easier to swear.

It is interesting that teachers themselves in the unofficial field agree with this approach.

“Doctors have one requirement, but the school curriculum has another,” says a primary school teacher at one of the Moscow schools, “and teachers cannot teach and fight with higher authorities or carry backpacks for their students.” Moreover, it’s different for everyone: some students are brought and picked up by a car with a driver, while others use three types of transport from another area. Some of them quietly halved their backpacks and, if anything happened, “Oh, I forgot at home, not on purpose.” And others obediently wear it, although it is hard for them, their health is undermined, but they do not complain either at home or at school. I feel sorry for them, but how can you help? It is necessary to either free everyone, or load everyone, there is no other way, this is a school. Well, or the child will become an outsider and will be teased, for which the parents will not thank us either.

Studying the issue confirms: from year to year, mainly in September, parents of schoolchildren go around in circles, discussing in real and virtual the “unbearable” weight of school bags, which significantly outweighs the permitted standards. Around October, everything calms down on its own, and the cart – or rather, the briefcase with excess weight – is still there: in the hands of a student who does not want to appear “frail.”

“When it comes to the school burden, children, like their parents, are divided into 3 categories,” summarizes school psychologist Svetlana Reznikova. – Some grumble (children whine, and parents are indignant at meetings and write complaints to the authorities). The latter act on the sly (children simply do not wear half of what is required, “forgot that’s all”, and their parents pretend that they do not notice anything, even if you point this out to them directly at a parent-teacher meeting), while the third get out of the situation with action – and not only adults, but also children. In my memory, in one class, the children themselves agreed with their desk neighbors to carry textbooks “in half.” But the most striking solution was a personal agreement, on the personal initiative of the third-graders (!), with the school cleaning lady Aunt Nina, who, in exchange for cleanliness in the toilet, agreed to store in her utility room, under the key, bags with the “change” of those who were too lazy to carry it home. Of course, there is a locker room at school, but leaving a change of shoes in it at night is prohibited and unsafe, because during the day it is always open. This does not mean that children themselves should solve problems with the number and weight of school supplies and the rationality of carrying them daily, but these resourceful third-graders will definitely grow up to be optimizers. As for parental optimization, in one class the parent committee raised money and bought a second set of textbooks for everyone, which is constantly stored in the classroom, now their children run light. Others bought e-books for the whole class and uploaded all the textbooks for the year at once. The method is modern and almost flawless: the simplest e-book costs 2-3 thousand rubles. and weighs almost nothing, and all the textbooks fit there. But there is one thing: the same standards prohibiting schoolchildren from carrying luggage heavier than allowed for their age also prohibits “working with electronic media” for more than a certain number of hours a day. And school lessons can turn into illegal “overtime.” The poor things are like on an airplane: if they don’t have an advantage, it’s overtime.