The Great Backpack Debate

    Will German schooling leave our seven-year-old son Maus with a warped spine?  I’m not worried because he’s constantly bent over his desk, toiling away at his multiplication tables.  Nor because his enthusiastic Aikido instructor is teaching him how to fall (trip-twist-thump!).  And not because the playground climbing frame is at least two stories high.  But rather because of the monstrous dimensions of his school backpack.



    In Germany school backpacks are big, both in size and price.  Every morning, up and down the land, little tikes set off to school lugging kaleidoscopic filing cabinets on their backs.  And their poor parents – cue the sound of paternal weeping – have to pay for the colossal things.  Last week in our local department store I couldn’t find any school bag for under €120!  Oh woe.

    As far as I can recall, I went to primary school with a neat leather satchel slung over my shoulder and clutching a small brown lunch bag in my hand.  Even in the depths of the Canadian winter, there was no need for any child to lug around a rucksack as heavy and as expensive as an antique oak bedside table.  Yet today the hallways of German primary school resemble multi-coloured furniture showrooms, with unnumbered, unwieldy Scout bags blocking the classroom doors.

    This cultural peculiarity intrigues me so, curiosity whetted, I set off to investigate.  Why do German children – who are at present much less brand-sensitive than their British and American counterparts – need these flashy and whopping travel trunks?  Do German educators secretly require children to carry half their body weight for at least two kilometres every day?   Or has German industry unleashed a dastardly behaviour-altering programme, bent on turning millions of innocent toddlers into muscle-bound consumers?

    In the course of my investigation I learnt first that mega-backpacks are not a recent phenomena.  As far back as the 1980s, Scout – the country’s leading supplier -- offered an exhaustive and seductive range.  Boys didn’t make the grade unless they owned a black Panther or red Dolphin.  Girls’ Scout bags were available in brash pink.  Amigo Kids was seen as a wannabe brand, at once showy and inferior.  Scout owners regularly kicked Amigo bags down the school steps (they would never subject a fellow Scout pack to such an insult).  Other brands were simply beneath contempt.

    Next I discovered that – with the introduction of printed designs -- thematic bags became more popular here than franchised television spin-offs.  Rather than say Batman or High School Musical backpacks, German kids chose generic dinosaur, racing car, unicorn or fairytale princess themes.  To this day branding remains surprisingly uncommon, with only Lego and Sponge Bob Squarepants bags bucking the trend.

    Finally I learnt that these shockingly overpriced and colourful backpacks are de rigeur only in primary schools.  Once a child turns 11 years old, and moves into secondary school, kiddie bags are dropped like overweight Cabbage Patch dolls (‘dude, they are SO yesterday’).  At the Gymnasium and Hauptschule, teenagers go for understated Eastpack or JanSport bags in black, granite or grunge…anything that isn’t bright or pretty.

    I can reveal that the reasons for this phenomena are quite prosaic.  German youngsters need big backpacks because most schools don’t have lockers, hence kids have no where to dump their text books, and because the school day tends to end at lunchtime.  Children are expected to spend the afternoon doing homework, so they need to carry all their books between classrooms, school and home.



    How then to protect my son’s back, and my pocketbook?  Well, padded and sturdy, no-name, double shoulder rucksacks are available (for a third of the price of similar Scout models) through ebay and from Woolworths (yes, dear Brits, Woolies does still exist here).  

    My decision not to surrender to the Scout-trend may deny Maus automatic entry to the classroom elite, but hopefully it will teach him the value of independence.  That’s my view anyway.  At least I don’t go as far as one foreign resident of Munich who, when confronting this very problem, suggested that parents should ‘…get a rectangular cardboard box that is approximately 57% the size of your child, attach a couple of straps, and spray paint random ***** all over it, using the most garish colour schemes you can possibly think of … that hopefully make your eyes almost bleed when you look at it.’  He then added, ‘I’m pretty sure that is what most parents do here.’