@KarenGrossEdu I understand the reasoning behind clear backpacks; they are designed to ensure that guns, knives, and drugs are not brought to school.
But clear backpacks have three flaws which, when viewed collectively, destroy their utility.
First, they deprive students of privacy as many students carry personal items in their backpacks, including make-up and tampons and stuffed animals or good luck charms or special journals or love notes or legitimate medications or Epipens. Who needs to see everyone’s personal business? Invasive, to say the least.
Second, clear backpacks will not prevent weapon entry into schools. If a student or others want to bring in weapons, they will still find a way easily. They will break weapons into parts and spread them in friends' backpacks. They will bring them in coats or slipped into books (hollowed out or not). If students are keen on killing or maiming, a clear backpack will not stop them.
Third, clear backpacks mask the underlying truth in the guise of transparency. Why do students want to do harm to themselves and others? What is the culture of our schools and what precipitates the level of violence in school? The answer doesn’t rest in a backpack — clear or not. It rests in understanding and addressing culture and discrimination and ethnic bias and gender difference and gangs and drug use and weakening mental health and family dysfunction and homelessness and food scarcity. To create an adage: One counselor for a day in a school is worth 1000 clear backpacks or more.
Bottom line: clear backpacks don’t clear up anything.
Karen Gross
I am an author and educator. I write adult and children's books and specialize in student success and the impact of trauma on learning and psychosocial development. My newest adult book is Trauma Doesn't Stop at the School Door; my newest children's book is titled Tongue Twisters and Beyond.
But clear backpacks have three flaws which, when viewed collectively, destroy their utility.
First, they deprive students of privacy as many students carry personal items in their backpacks, including make-up and tampons and stuffed animals or good luck charms or special journals or love notes or legitimate medications or Epipens. Who needs to see everyone’s personal business? Invasive, to say the least.
Second, clear backpacks will not prevent weapon entry into schools. If a student or others want to bring in weapons, they will still find a way easily. They will break weapons into parts and spread them in friends' backpacks. They will bring them in coats or slipped into books (hollowed out or not). If students are keen on killing or maiming, a clear backpack will not stop them.
Third, clear backpacks mask the underlying truth in the guise of transparency. Why do students want to do harm to themselves and others? What is the culture of our schools and what precipitates the level of violence in school? The answer doesn’t rest in a backpack — clear or not. It rests in understanding and addressing culture and discrimination and ethnic bias and gender difference and gangs and drug use and weakening mental health and family dysfunction and homelessness and food scarcity. To create an adage: One counselor for a day in a school is worth 1000 clear backpacks or more.
Bottom line: clear backpacks don’t clear up anything.
Karen Gross
I am an author and educator. I write adult and children's books and specialize in student success and the impact of trauma on learning and psychosocial development. My newest adult book is Trauma Doesn't Stop at the School Door; my newest children's book is titled Tongue Twisters and Beyond.