When the girls started school, the PTA proudly presented all the news pupils in reception with a school branded satchel. Such a nice gesture and for three years, except for Covid, they dutifully carried their satchel to school every day. But the weird thing was, they had absolutely nothing to carry to and from school. They didn’t have homework. The school was paperless with all letters and consent forms to parents/carers done by email. They were too young for a door key. On PE days they wore their kit the whole day (so nothing to carry) and their lunch boxes were too big. So all three carried empty school bags to and from school every day. Worn as a badge of honour, a nod to obedience or to conform – who knows, but they never lost them, not once.
By Year 3, they wanted an upgrade, something which marked them as ‘in’ and individual at the same time. Driven by a developing skill of bag envy. The bank account was drained when we bought three bags from the on-trend brand at that time. The price tag didn’t change their function, and the girls continued to carry empty bags to and from school, but it did change how often they got lost; once a week on average, I would say.
Year 4 saw repeated requests to get a new bag, as the girls experienced one of the bag’s harshest lessons; as soon as you have bought one, you wish you had chosen a different one.
In Year 5, the girls started to bring home bits of paper with homework or doodles. And the school switched from a sticker system to certificates to reward ‘good’ behaviour. They soon learned that bags mysteriously fill with up junk and by Year 6 they understood that you will never find what you’re looking for in your bag.
Now we are in Year 7 and the bags’ time had surely come. Each aspect of school life requires its own item in the bag;
- no coat pegs means coat goes in bag
- a snack shop requires money in a purse, in the bag
- PE now requires a post PE hairbrush so into the bag goes a hairbrush
- the complicated school day means checklists and timetable go in the bag
- each subject requires its own paraphernalia; exercise books, printed sheets, vocabulary lists, pencil case, glue stick (parents, please provide), black pen, green pen, calculator, geometry set, all in the bag
- independent travel (well, in theory anyway) sees a house key and travel card popped into the bag
- the script of the school plays crumpled in the bag
Yes Year 7 has really stretched the bag to its full limits and revealed a universal truth; no bag is the right size. Too big and it looks clumsy, feels overbearing, could literally cause an accident. Too small and you cannot fit in everything you need. No, no bag is the right size.
Not to mention that when Sam swings it onto her back she stumbles backwards with the weight while Emily has come close to landing someone with a black eye such is the swing required to get the bag into a comfortable shoulder position. And Emily has managed to leave hers on the bus.
What more does the school bag have to teach us?
