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Comment by highcountess | Hacker News Reader

The 30lb backpacks were only a function of our deranged society, economy, and government. I am sure others here will be able to attest that education in Europe not only was better for reasons that cannot be openly discussed in our censorious society, but the textbooks were denser with information that was also better structured, while also being lighter in weight. Lockers are simply not even a thing in Europe because children are carrying less and they have standardized backpacks.

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We had lockers in the European high school that I went to. As I recall it was not allowed to bring backpacks into the classroom, you were supposed to only bring the relevant items to each class and keep the rest in your locker.

I don't think the combined weight of all books used in an entire semester would add up to 30lb, maybe if including dictionaries and atlases and other reference litteraturen that was kept in each classroom (or carted around on trollies by the teachers).

You are conflating things, and then also making my argument, but are unnecessarily cantankerous so you just want to argue. Are you a Brit by any chance?

Have you ever seen the school books that Americans had to carry around? They were/are 2"/5cm thick books, weigh a few pounds each, and kids carried around about 6-8 per semester.

You made my point in that European school books are a lot less heavy and also less physically voluminous. The theory behind American books being that more spacing and less information per page makes learning easier, even though all the evidence clearly indicates that is very likely inaccurate.

Even though you are clearly one of those necessarily contrarian types for reasons that are your own, my point still stands that even if you had lockers for other reasons, the fact that school books in most European countries in which I have visited schools, utilize books that are a lot less heavy and are more information dense and can easily be carried around.

What is it with you types that you latch onto meaningless and nonsense things like that you did have lockers, while totally missing the core of the point, that the argument was about the weight and size of books??? That sounds like something you may want to think about.

I was responding to your closing sentence, which is made up of two clearly false and one likely true statement.

> Lockers are simply not even a thing in Europe because children are carrying less and they have standardized backpacks.

I'm not sure which European country you're thinking about, but we had lockers, individual backpacks and heavy textbooks. I never used my locker because we didn't have enough time between lessons, so I just carried all my heavy textbooks for the day as did most people.

Literally every single claim that you've made is false.

> education in Europe not only was better for reasons that cannot be openly discussed in our censorious society

Huh?

I would explain it to you, but there are topics that simply cannot be discussed, regardless of how correct, important, and critical they are. I may as well try to tell you about the heliocentric model in the 17th century.

It's certainly up to you, but "my ideas are as important as the heliocentric model, but humanity is so far behind me that I can't even tell you about them" does not speak favorably about your ideas. (Not to mention that it's hard to imagine that the consequences for whatever your heresy is several posts deep in an anonymous HN comment thread would be anything worse than a few downvotes.)

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