Add me to that list. We had to carry them all due to a locker ban after kids kept bringing guns to school. Backpack was as long as about half my height. Enormous strain on shoulders plus 8 books slamming into by spine for years. Weight broke backpack's straps repeatedly. Many of us have back pain and inability to get comfortable easily for rest of our lives.

So, yeah, it's nice if textbook makers or those acquiring something in school remember the physical impact of books getting as thick as possible. Cheap, locked-down e-Readers might make a decent startup idea for improving poor's conditions. Along the lines of OLPC.

> Enormous strain on shoulders plus 8 books slamming into by spine for years. Weight broke backpack's straps repeatedly. Many of us have back pain and inability to get comfortable easily for rest of our lives.

Seriously, get a wheeled backpack. No need to make things worse for yourself.

I think I saw one or two of those. Ostracized, "checked," or beat down more than most. I was still trying to fit in at the time. Wasn't a solution although great in retrospect. ;)

> Many of us have back pain and inability to get comfortable easily for rest of our lives.

My shoulders are still paying for my high school textbooks 21 years later :(

My son was the accidental beneficiary of the new edition of a history text in high school: the new edition stayed in his locker at school, and he picked up for a few bucks the older edition, which hardly differed, to use at home.

But I think that we Americans are in general too much in love with the apparatus of education: it's a hell of a lot easier to estimate the weight of a backpack than it is to evaluate what actually happens in the classroom and what the kids are learning. So it reassures us to see a seven-year-old girl carrying a backpack she could about sleep in.

At least the books are free.

Not always... pretty sure even for the brief time I was in a public primary school here in Australia my parents had to contribute for textbooks. I suspect they had some kind of aid available for families who really couldn't afford it, but I'm not sure.

Of course they aren't.

But the entity who decides to use the book is pretty much the same as the entity who budgets the money for the book. In a university, the students pay while the professors/departments choose.

I see your point, but I think individual schools don't make the choice. This stuff is usually done at the school board level, or maybe even State level.

It's a giant racket too, perhaps even worse than the university-level racket: http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

My sister's public middle school in Indiana has student book fees, and various fees for using mandatory assigned Chromebooks, some of which are refunded if it's returned in good order at the end of the year, some aren't.

If you are low-income, you can get the fees waived, and the majority of her school books are still free. But not all.