MARK MY WORD: KIDS SAY COOL BACKPACKS ARE KEY TO SCHOOLING

Forget classroom size and teachers' aides. The key to a good education is a cool backpack.

As a dad, I know that's true. Why else would we buy the latest back-to-school backpacks for our children?

Entering the fourth grade is no small matter for Becca. It requires a beige and black backpack with enough zippered pockets to hold a lifetime supply of gum and a girl's entire back-to-school wardrobe.

Last year, Becca had a backpack with wheels and a handle that allowed you to pull it rather than carry it. But the color scheme wasn't right this year, Becca tells me.

For kindergarten, Bailey has a new backpack too. A pink and purple one sporting the motto, "Be the Girl You Wanna Be."

It isn't good grammar, but the backpack comes complete with side pockets and heavy duty shoulder straps that look like they'd withstand most natural disasters.

Both girls have new lunch boxes too. They're more like lunch bags than boxes. When I was growing up, a lunch box was a thin metal box decorated with the Lone Ranger or some other TV hero.

We thought that was neat. But today's students would revolt at the sight of such things.

Education, it seems, is only as good as the latest merchandise.

And backpacks are essential. After all, students can't be expected to actually carry textbooks in their arms.

Of course, thanks to today's backpacks you could carry an entire library of textbooks at a one time and still have room for a few stuffed animals and extra shoes.

In my youth, it wasn't cool to bag it. You wanted to carry your books so all could see. Hauling them around in a bag or a briefcase was no way to move up in student social status.

But times have changed. From kindergarten through college, backpacks have become as common as blue jeans. Some are even made of clear plastic, allowing you and your classmates to see everything in your bag including that day-old peanut butter sandwich.

Some backpacks come with detachable lunch totes and padded backs.

Backpacks have become students' mobile homes. You could lose an entire Third World country in some of these backpacks.

It's only a matter of time before backpacks will be motorized and programmed to roll along behind their owners like pet dogs.

Becca and Bailey are excited about the approaching school year. Armed with a truckload of school supplies, they're ready to learn or at least use up all their pencils and erasers.

Bailey is particularly excited about kindergarten. She parades around the living room in her backpack at night as if it already were the first day of school.

Of course, she still has plenty to learn.

For one thing, she discovered the hard way that putting a pink plastic bead into one's ear is a bad idea.

Joni had to take her to three doctors' offices before she found a physician with the necessary equipment to extract the bead.

As Bailey tells it, the bead fell into her ear while she was taking a nap at day care. No one at the day care center could identify the offending bead.

Naturally, none of this would have happened if that bead had been zipped up tight in an inner pouch of a solid backpack where no ear could get to it.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste, and so is your ear.

Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.