Carrying Books

I note in all the school supplies today are knapsacks.

Back in the day, the only ones wearing knapsacks were soldiers.

The art of carrying books meant balancing several books stacked upon each other under one arm or pressed to your chest walking for several blocks. A 3-ring binder could help distribute the weight and the canvas cover helped keeping the books from sliding back and forth.

When assigned classes you were also assigned a locker to keep your assigned books during school hours. These books were like library books. You didn’t get to keep them, but just rent them while in your grade. Some had seen a lot of history and some were brand new.

The problem was lugging them home and back again. You could leave them in the locker until the next morning and try to jam all the reading in before the bell rang. If you forgot a book, you could call other classmates to reference a passage for you but it never worked.

The books had no protection from the weather other than a paper cover made from a grocery bag and if they were lost you got the stockade. Books were precious. They could be traded back and forth between classmates but they had to be turned back in at the end of the year.

Along with the books, you had to carry your pencils and pens and paper and erasers. All the pockets were filled and if you used a slide rule (previous calculator) you wore it in a sling on your belt.

By the way, you also had to carry your lunch in a metal box or paper sack.

I’m familiar with the knapsack. Riding a bike (before saddle bags) a knapsack was the only means to transport everything from art projects to beer. Limited capacity would mean many trips to accomplish the goal. In college I’d carry an over the shoulder man’s purse (former WWII ammo canvas bag) to carry art supplies, pipes and tobacco, cameras and as sundry.

So today I see all the kids with knapsacks in multiple colors and designs.

They carry their tablets, headphones, laptops, phones and chargers, but where are the books? Has the heavy lifting been replaced?

So much is going to the cloud; an iPhone in your pocket can record lectures, capture images and search references that the school library cannot provide. Raise you hand to ask questions on Twitter or Skype but if your profile picture isn’t intriguing, you may not get attention from the teacher.

Soon kids won’t have to attend another building for education (a cost savings to the community), but just plug into Algebra II every Tuesday at 10AM with headphones at home while drinking soda in their sweats. Take the test online. If you fail, you will be disconnected.

Just the other day, I walked down to the school to take a test. I did not have to carry any books or a No. 2 pencil. I showed my ID card to verify I was a student of civics and was handed my test. I filled in the boxes (no checks or X’s as instructed) and handed it back to the teacher. I was given a sticker so I guess I passed.