Family Time -- Steve Smith
My first school locker was at Bancroft Junior High School in Los
Angeles in 1968.
Bancroft was a beautiful old school in the middle of the Hollywood
movie scene near Highland Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard. I remember
the last episode of the television show “The Fugitive” -- a Quinn Martin
production -- was filmed there.
Actually, I had two lockers, as did everyone else in the school. The
one in the main building was for books and other studious stuff. The
other was in the boys’ locker room attached to the gymnasium. A locker
room is a good place to have lockers.
Back then, lockers weren’t used for much other than books and lunch.
Oh sure, there were probably a few radicals who kept a few personal items
in their locker, but mostly it was a way station; a chance to drop off
one load of books and pick up another on the way to the next class.
Back then, no one kept plans for a pipe bomb in their locker. No one
kept a loaded gun, and no one kept a pint of whiskey there. Lockers were
lockers, and anyone stupid enough to keep weapons or contraband in a
place where the authorities had unlimited access deserved what they got.
After all, that’s why we had car trunks.
Across the country, lockers have been disappearing. The murders at
Columbine High School three years ago put the final nail in the coffin
for many schools. At Columbine, 13 people were killed and 23 wounded, and
the suspects were supposed to have used their lockers to store weapons
from time to time.
Before the blazing firepower at Columbine, and after my time in the
school system, the lowering locker tally was because of the suspicion of
illegal drugs. Lockers were seen as offices out of which kids were making
all kinds of drug deals. I am certain some of that is true.
So school districts started doing away with lockers as though that
would solve so many problems. No lockers, no problems.
Had I been prescient, I would have invested my meager portfolio in
whatever company is the nation’s leading manufacturer of backpacks the
moment I first heard about the demise of the school locker.
Ah, yes, the backpack. That’s the two-ton transport device used by
children to do what the locker used to do. They’re functional and fun and
often, they are dangerous.
In December 1998, the Consumer Products Safety Commission released a
report stating that heavy backpacks caused an estimated 3,000 emergency
room visits by children ages 5 to 14. In September, the state Assembly
voted 69 to 0 to spend your money to study the issue.
One survey conducted by D.D. Pasco, a physical therapist, et al,
showed children ages 11 to 13 use both backpack straps only 16.6% of the
time. This is significant because using only one strap can greatly
increase the damage to a kid’s musculoskeletal system.
“One-strappers promote lateral spinal bending and shoulder elevation
as well as significantly altering spatial and temporal gait parameters
while decreasing stride length and increasing stride frequency,” the
study reported.
Another study showed that “cervical lateral flexion was significantly
increased when wearing one strap as compared to two. [There was] a linear
increase in head-forward posture and thoracic flexion deviations as
backpack weight increased.”
In plain English, that means that carrying a backpack with one strap
is bad. Any time a backpack is worn with a single strap, there is an
asymmetrical load placed on the skeletal structure and spine. For mature
frames, one-strapping is no big deal. But imagine putting an already
heavy load on a tiny frame, then knocking it off balance, and you have a
good idea of the danger.
There are a few ways to reduce the danger of heavy backpacks.
One is to buy a sling-strap, sling-type backpack. This style centers
the load close to the spine’s midline and forces balance.
Another way is to educate kids on the dangers of heavy backpacks and
the risks of carrying them with only one strap. Perhaps we could call the
program “BARE” for “Backpack Abuse Resistance Education.”
Still another way is to get a rolling backpack, although by the time
you put the thing on wheels, it’s no longer a “back” pack, it’s luggage.
The last two methods of reducing the risk of backpack injury make too
much sense and will never be implemented. The first is to reduce the
amount of homework we give our kids. Less homework, less stuff to carry
around.
The last method is to bring back lockers and random locker inspections
and stop making millions of kids suffer for the bad behavior of a few.
* STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and freelance writer. Readers
may leave a message for him on the Daily Pilot hotline at (949) 642-6086.
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