If you've ever attended high school, then you'll know textbooks are too heavy. Especially when you have to carry multiple books every day. If you a parent, then you are probably is aware of your kids' back pack weight. I'm trying to start a campaign to decrease the weight of the books and I want to hear some opinions.

Why can't they separate those thick books into 5 or 6 smaller books/sections so we can carry only the one we need? I'm kind of doing this poll for my school on how they can make textbooks lighter.

1. the first option is to simply get 5 or 6 individual smaller books to replace a single large book.

2. the second option is to get those 5 or 6 smaller books bounded to the spine of the complete book with zippers, so that they can be removed easily.

Compared to option 1, the advantage of the second option is that you have more page organization. It'll be less hasselsome when you need to flip back and forth between various pages, and it's easier to find a specific page you want. If you don't unzip any section, it'll just be like a regular book. It's less messy. And you don't have to swap books when you need to check the answers on the back or brush up on some previous stuff.

The disadvantage of the second option is that it'll be slightly more expensive. Students (or parents) will be required to pay a $1 fee for option 2 for each school year because schools would need to purchase the slightly more expensive books. Or, the school might just eat the cost and let the taxpayers foot the bill.

Here's the reason: with option 2, each book will probably be $1 more expensive to produce. An typical student gets 5 books for a year. But let's say a set of books last 5 years for the school. That means one students pays an extra buck for the year if he choose option 2.

So, which one do you prefer if you are a student? . Thanks

 

textbooks have been around forever, thier size hasnt changed much, I highly doubt polling a ford truck board or your school will do anything since the school does not publish the books.

When I was in highschool, I opted to carry areound a book bag opposed to carrying my books loose. Every kid learned quickly what books they had to have for what class. Books are heavy, but thats a fact of life... I've backpacked through mountians with a 40lb backpack, A few textbooks is nothing (wait till you see the college texts)

by efficiently using your passing periods, you should be able to get whatever you need

 

Ahh, high school books. I think mine are still locked away in my gym locker Wait until college and you have to buy those heavy books. I've had some classes that required multiple books.

 

well i do remember highschool

i had these books to carry because we had no locker

algebra
biology
history
english
economics
government

each of those was about 12-13 lbs. i really hated it and somedays i would just not bring them. 78 lbs is harsh to carry around all day.

 

Anything that increases the costs to a school is going to be a fight to get. While it may seem that option 1 would not cost anything more, you have to figure that instead of the binding process on 1 book, you now have to perform binding on 4 or 5 books, which means more time, which means higher production costs. Time is money. There are options besides modifiying books...those back packs with rollers on them, using lockers (although those are fading from schools), using your car, I used mine as a locker, keep my books in car, would go get them during break and lunch. This is something that the text book manufacturer would have to deal with, not the school. The school would have some impact, but it ultimately is the publisher's choice. I'm not trying to burst your bubble here, just some facts.

 

acctually i have weighted my school book bag right at 35 lbs, paper and cardboard are acctually quite heavy. plus the bags of today are in no way load supporting, all the weight goes to the back of the shoulders instead of resting on the lower back, where it should.

I think they should use CD-ROMs instead of textbooks, it would be a lot cheaper.

 

yes, but there'd have to be some sort of "reader" at every desk, that wont be cheap

 

The CD is a good idea, but I know I end up printing a lot of supplemental stuff to study off of rather than reading it off of a computer screen. It's better for me to study by if I can mark on it and make a general mess of it

 

Since everything is so cheap nowadays and is automated, it really wouldn't cost more than a few cents for them to do either option 1 or option 2. When you spread out the cost a book will be used at a school, 8 or 10 years, it's really not that much. As I analyzed above. It'll probably cost less than $1 per student per year.

If a school doesn't want that cost, I'm sure a lot of student would rather pay $1 for a whole year rather than pulling a suitcase (which is a LOT more expensive than a regular bag pack, and a lot less inconvenient. I was the only kid that had a suitcase in high school and I got laughed at everyday. Looked like I was a traveler... or driving a car, which most students don't have anyway, everyday for a year. I didn't even mention gas price or parking fees yet.

Come on, we are talking about a $1 here.

 

You'll first need to buy a laptop or a reader. The ergonomics really cannot compare with a printed book when you need to flip back and forth or annotate. You also have to worry about batteries, reliability, dropping it, or getting stolen or robbed (which is pretty bad at poor neighborhoods)

And you'll have to pay at least $300 for such a device first BEFORE we even go into the price of the CDs.

Electronic textbooks are only gonna be 20% cheaper since most of the cost is due to author's royalties, overheads, editing, marketing, etc.

 

A MUCH simpler and cheaper solution would be to have a class set of the books, so that the students would leave their books at home, and then use the class set in class.

I'm not sure I agree with you about the cost being that low to the schools, either. Have you priced textbooks lately? There's some serious markup going on there, and I doubt that's going to change anytime soon. I'd also worry about durability with the books in smaller, lighter units, although I have no evidence to back that up.

EDIT: I'm in college, and I've never had any trouble with with weight of books, either in high school or in college. I do worry a bit about my sister, who is rather petite and sometimes carries 40+ lbs of books home from high school, but I figure she'll figure out which ones REALLY need to come home if the weight gets to be a problem for her.

 

how about using the lockers? I used visit my locker every other class and carry at most one to two books at a time. its there for a reason, if not, i would address this issue to your board of education

 

the same places wont spend extra cash on books either

 

Obviously, the poor neighborhoods care about money. But each textbook is already $80 on average. Adding a few zippers might raise the price $1.5. Not that much of a difference.

But the benefit is worth the cost I think. Light loads on thousands of students? Students more likely to participate and study since they'll actually carry their books instead of just leaving them?

When students do not carry heavy books, that harm the education system a lot and result in much more wasted money. I read some where that textbooks cost only 2% of a school's budget.

A good idea is the charge student the money, like I orginally proposed. Student who want lighter loads for a year just pay $1. A school can do an initial survey and get a rough idea of how many students would like that option (my guess is majority), and order a suitable amount of books for those students.

There obviously will be question on durability. But in reality, the robustness of a book has more to do with how they are bounded (sewed, glued) rather than whether the cover is hard or soft.

If option 2 is used, then every "module" can be made thin since zippers keep them organized. That way, a student can just carry it in their class folders, which protects well, and adds to the organization.

Students that want lighter weight but do not carry the lighter modules in their folders will have to pay a fine if the module is terribly worn.

There you go, perfect solution. It gives everyone choice. Doesn't add much cost to school, and students get less weights.

 

CAn you back that up?

I couldnt find anything but I cant believe college texts could be cheaper than highschool texts

http://www.nacs.org/common/research/faq_textbooks.pdf