Plan with details now = suffer less later

Time to update our report again.

I'm doing the analysis for our survey result and during the process I started to realise how inefficient the questions that we made were.

Some questions were not detailed enough which cause ambiguity in the answers.

For instance the question

"How long do you usually take to travel from home to school?"

The travel time does affect how long students have to carry their bags BUT only in the case if they are walking or travelling by public transports with no seats. The question doesn't take into account factors like method of transportation which causes answers to be biased and I must say invalid. But... we just assume that majority of them are walking/taking public transportation to make their answers valid.

Another problem that I found is that I cannot make much comparison and linkage between all the questions. I suppose good survey questions are able to get answers that support/contrast each other.
It's a bit hard to do but I still can make some links :)

Lesson learned here: be clear and detailed with survey question to make analysis easier.

Another Ergonomically Designed Bag :)

Another important finding!
Ergonomics school bags for children are not so rare after all.

http://www.kid2youth.sg/

This website shows that there are schoolbags that claim that their designs consider orthopedic support system, weight distribution, comfort as well as balance.

One of the most popular ergonomics bags is the ERGOBAG.

The design has won the RED DOT DESIGN AWARD 2011.

I found a video about the bag but it is explained in German unfortunately but the pictures in this video is quite self-explanatory.

Gathering Information, who says it's easy peasy?

So I am working on my research report again. I am writing up about Primary and Secondary Students in Singapore. I thought it was going to be easy to write it up but then it turns out that I need to look for statistics that will tell me the facts about Singaporean students. 

Well I found a trustworthy statistics from Education Statistics Digest 2013 that tells me the total number of primary and secondary students in Singapore but then I need to look for the average height and weight of these students.

Photo courtesy by Singapore Statistics Digest 2013

This is when I hit the wall.

Can't find any information anywhere.

Not in any Singapore Government's websites, not in UNICEF website. Just nowhere to be found.

It's the most important variables that I need to take into consideration when designing the solution to the heavy school bag problem yet I don't think I can find the information anywhere.

Singapore School Curriculum

Education system in Singapore is quite different to my country's system.

6 years of primary school and 4 year of secondary school. It's PACKED.

Maybe that is one of the reasons of why students' bags here are pregnant with books and other things. I just looked up for the official curriculum set out by the Ministry of Education and found out how the system is like here.

For primary students, there are 4 core subjects that they need to study plus other extra subjects like co-curricular activities, character & citizenship education, physical education and project work. 

One subject, take maths for an example, will require a student to carry a textbook, a workbook and sometimes a calculator. If in a day there will be 2 subjects learned plus a PE class then hypothetically the weight that needs to be carried tripled in amount.
I don't really know what a primary student's timetable is like and how local primary school' curriculum varies from one to another but looking at the surface of this, it looks like there are many books and equipments to be carried to school everyday.
I will research into it later.

Ergonomics School Bag Design

Just did a research if there is any available ergonomically designed school bag in Singapore.

Found this Firefly bag that is designed by Dr. Koh who did an extensive research on primary school pupils to come up with an erogonomic bag design. 

All pictures courtesy by http://www.fireflytm.com/Smart%2009.html

Since most bags are designed to fit the posture of Caucasian children, Dr. Koh and his colleagues specifically designed these bags to fit the Asian children's frame that tends to be smaller.

The bag is broader and shorter compared to normal school bag that is long and narrow. Inspired by the trekking bag design, this bag takes after its weight redistribution design to allow weight to be distributed to stronger muscles.

 

The bag, reported by The Straits Times in 28 Feb 2013, has been tested on school children and the result is that this bag causes less stress on the lower bodies comparably to other bags.

It can compete well with other brands because of its comparatively lower price, it only costs $99 and is available in most book stores in Singapore.

In the Shoes of A Single Mother

Name: Ms. Maya Lim

Age: 33

Jobs: Part-time cashier at a supermarket, Kopitiam & household cleaner
Working hours: 7 a.m - 10 p.m (Mon-Fri)
Working location: Jurong East

Live: Choa Chu Kang

Socio-economic status: Low income

Marriage status: Single mother

Children: Ben, 11 year old (primary 6)

                   Phoebe, 7 year old (primary 2)

22 January 2014

00.15 a.m

Dear Diary,

The kids are already fast asleep, finally I've got some time to myself. 

Work has always been tiring as always but I can't complain, I'm thankful enough to have quite a decent job to be able to feed my family.

It's sad though that I haven't got any presents for my kids, Chinese New Year is coming so soon.

I've been thinking about Ben's schoolbag lately. Poor kid, he has to carry so many books to school and he always hunches while carrying his bag. But seriously, I just looked at his bag that is only 4 months of being used, the stitches on the shoulder straps are already coming apart. It's quite bad.

I told him not to carry all of his books to school but he won't listen. He said that he wanted to read his books at school. But Ben is so careless, I am afraid too that he will forget one of his books again and lost it like last time, books are so expensive these days, especially text books, can't afford to buy extras if he ever lost one.

Bugis Market

Soon I have to buy  him a new bag. Again. I don't know why bags just don't last long like it used to during my school time. Yes they are more fashionable now but they get damaged too easily. Can it be because of the books?
Anyway, Ms. Tham told me I didn't have to go clean her house this afternoon so I went looking for Ben's bag. I have to look around to find a really good quality bag but of course, low price. I went to Bugis market. Found a bag suitable for Ben, big, easily-cleaned material, quite trendy but it's $56. Pass.

The black bag I like

 

Adidas light weight bag

Then I want to see how good are the branded bags. So I went to Adidas, Converse and Kappa shops. They really have nice materials bag. One I found was very light but big in size but the price again stops me from buying it. I really was curious about all the bags there so I kept asking about the features of a bag and compared with others. The shop assistant was a bit annoyed with me and went away but yea, those nice bags are out of my budget. They cost around $60 and above.

Quality does come with a high price. Well I guess I have to try my luck at second hand shop. Sometimes they have good bags there. 

Ben just have to be thankful enough that he still can go to school with our tight budget. He needs to work hard and be not fussy about his needs too much. If his bag is too heavy, he can just leave books at home. I really can't afford to buy new bags for so often. Won't spoil him too much, besides, his sister just started primary school meaning I have to be really careful with any extra spending.

Heavy Burden of Chasing Knowledge

Living in a fast-paced society like a nowadays creates many changes to the way we carry out our lives. We are getting used to "instant" everything from instant food to instant weight loss program and even instant education system.  

It's the speed that improves our living standard but it's also the speed that ruins it.

To cope with this speed we have to learn FAST, SMART and EFFECTIVE.

For students, like me, I need to adapt to this instant education system by taking supplementary lessons, being pro-active in learning, read more books, etc.

courtesy of www.themagazine.ca

Yes that means HEAVY and HEAVIER bag that I need to carry around everytime I go to campus.

Being a student all my life, I can totally identify with current student's problem of HEAVY BAG. Studying is already a hard thing to do and the heavy bag is adding to the burden of finding knowledge. More to that the lengthy distance travelled from home to school just worsens it.

BACK, NECK and SHOULDER pain. That is no longer uncommon.

- THEY BURN EVERYDAY -

 I am a VICTIM, so are other students from year 1 to college.

So who is the antagonist in this whole heavy bag scenario?

Parents? Teachers? School?

Finding a subject to blame this problem on to is not an easy thing.

Many have contributed in creating this problem so I can't pinpoint the creator of this problem.

Teachers, for instance, are often blamed by parents for telling students to bring extra things for lessons but are they really the cause of it?

In my opinion they just do what they are supposed to do. So who tell them what to do? The school does through the curriculum it is adopting. Then it is the school's fault? Part of it.

No parents seem to be attracted to enrolling their children in a school that takes longer years to graduate from. So now many schools cut down the years by cramming the lessons and shortens the holiday duration. But  the curriculum cannot be carried out without first getting Government's approval. Aha! so it's the Government and all those politicians who make students suffer.

Well, sort of, but then why does the Government makes such a decision? For revenge?

Are they that childish in mind?

I guess it's the demand of the society and the economy that crave for fast development, fast profit gaining, fast increase in living standard. The Stone Age children didn't have to carry such heavy backpacks; there was no need to gain knowledge to get a decent job, thus, higher living standard.

It's the demand of everyone in the society that creates an illusion of education as the source of the whole successful life concept. This causes students to carry heavy textbooks and all just to be able to survive in this highly competitive society. 

So BLAME EVERYONE IN YOUR COUNTRY students! Except yourself of course! :D 

If there is one thing that can be done to solve this problem is to change the way our society thinks, which is not instant and almost nearly impossible.
This is when a group of creative students like us are needed to design a solution to such problem ;)