The Miami Herald – Laurie Futterman
” Many of us can recall the good-old days when middle and high schools had lockers. Although the contents of these hallway storage units defined our persona — from stickers and dirty jerseys to notebooks and love letters — they were the hub of social interactions and provided us a place to store books and binders for the classes we needed. But sadly, weapons and drugs that found their way into these lockers as well as hallway cliques and congestion. Toss in the savings of thousands of construction dollars, and you can understand why lockers disappeared from schools. And with their disappearance came the backpack. Yet many locker-less schools are facing criticism from parents, who argue that it results in heavier backpacks for students. So every morning the march of backpacks begins; tortoise-looking kids hunched forward to counterbalance the weight of their saddled packs , moving up and down the stairwells and through the hallways. But you have to wonder what 12 years of backpack toting has on growing spines.”(more)