Sure, there were notebooks and folders, but nothing to trap them. The organizer that had built its brand name more than anything else was nowhere to be seen. Walmart, ditto.Īnd then I went to the Mead site, doing a search for Trapper Keepers, and found myself a bit stunned. I searched for some models for purchase on Amazon and found nothing but folders and notebooks-no binders. Did the Trapper Keeper get discontinued? A brief investigationĪs I was doing research on the state of the Trapper Keeper in 2018, I noticed a problem which made me wonder if the contraband status of the colorful folder organizer finally caught up with it. Lockers and desks are small and you just have to deal with it, Chappie.Ī Trapper Keeper iPad case. So it doesn’t matter if the rules sound arbitrary and stupid and obsessed with order over taste-ultimately, kids and their retro-minded parents have to live with the fact that many schools are not going to let kids have Trapper Keepers. Making room for all those students and all their school supplies? That stuff costs money. In bold letters at the top of their recommended school supplies lists, they state, “NO TRAPPER KEEPERS or BOOKBAGS ON WHEELS (they just don’t fit in lockers).”Ī search of similar documents around the country suggests this stance is not unique, especially at elementary schools and some middle schools.Īs it turns out, lockers are expensive. Park Elementary in Kearney, Nebraska, is just one example of this stance in action.
A random search of actual school-supply documents emphasizes that the issue may be one of physical space. The issue might not even be the binders themselves, but the facilities of the school. They can’t find anything,” explained sixth-grade English teacher Janice Kopp. “The kids with Trapper Keepers tend to throw the papers in and don’t organize. The other argument that the article highlighted was that teachers believed that the devices failed at their primary task-organizing information. “You ask a student to take out a worksheet, and by the time they open all the sections out and find it, the Trapper Keeper has reached over to another person’s desk,” argued fourth-grade teacher Lucinda Mann, who took particular issue with the way that the binders flapped out on desks. Perhaps the best explanation for the ban comes from a 2001 Washington Post article, which points out that many teachers find the devices’ large size and relative complexity a deterrent when it comes to getting stuff done in the classroom. There had to be a reason.”Ĭonsider subscribing to our freaking newsletter. “Yes, schools are stricter about certain things than they used to be, but this one threw me,” wrote Inside Higher Ed blogger (and community college dean) Matt Reed. It’s a situation that, to this day, confuses the heck out of some education professionals. As a result, schools would ban these beacons of efficiency because said efficiency benefits could not be trusted in the hands of 11-year-olds. Among the problems? Their size, the fact that the organizers once used velcro, and the fact that there were multiplication tables inside of them.
Years before Nike proved that cool kids love inanimate objects that could be used as status symbols, Mead’s binder was already there, with an easy way to express one’s personality and style in the classroom.īut there was just one problem: They frustrated teachers for a wide variety of reasons. The Trapper Keeper of yore did something really interesting for an organizer: it was hip.