Organisation is the key to success. A place for everything and everything in its place. These proverbs that encapsulate the importance of organising and taking responsibility were inextricably woven into the convent education I received in India during the 1960s.
A piece of advice a nun used to proffer relates particularly well to the problem of the increasingly heavy school bag. She said: "Students should bear some responsibility for their huge daily burden, by organising their bags before going to bed each night."
A Maltese study of 1,505 students randomly selected from 28 schools identified the heaviest items in their bags as text books, followed by thick notebooks and files, lunch boxes, bottles and juice cartons, and materials such as sports kits and items for home economics.
It is universally acknowledged that the maximum load that should be carried by students is related primarily to their body weight.
While the often-quoted ratio of 10 per cent of body weight cannot be rigidly applied, school bags that are 20 per cent or more of a child's body weight must be regarded as excessively heavy.
"Studies indicate that 96 per cent of students carry school bags which are heavier than 15 per cent of their weight," says Dr Grace Szeto Pui-yuk, an associate professor at the Polytechnic University's department of rehabilitation sciences. This has resulted in four to five in every 1,000 Hong Kong students suffering from scoliosis - a condition where the spine curves from side to side - according to the department of orthopaedic surgery at the University of Hong Kong medical school.
Suggestions to alleviate this problem have included changing the type of backpacks students carry, doing away with books, using e-text books, online resources and providing a class set of text books.