John Erdreich- erdreich@ieee.org
Ostergaard Acoustical Associates, 200 Executive Drive
W. Orange, NJ, 07052
Popular version of paper 2aNS1
Presented Tuesday morning, December
4, 2001
142nd ASA Meeting, Fort Lauderdale, FL
The idea of teaching children to read in a darkened classroom without lights would strike anyone as an absurd idea. Why then, if everyone understands that you have to see the print in order to read it, don't we understand that it is equally important to clearly hear a teacher to learn in the normal classroom? Every architect, school board member, and parent insists on adequate lighting for a classroom. Design professionals know how to design proper lighting and how to measure it. Similarly, any school design should require adequate speech intelligibility in every learning space. Speech intelligibility can be measured and the classroom can be designed to maximize speech intelligibility.
We have had the opportunity in numerous projects in which we have been asked to assist architects and school administrations to correct poor speech intelligibility in instructional spaces to measure acoustical environments in many schools. Spaces in which instruction takes place that have been measures include classrooms, auditoriums, gymnasiums, and media centers. We have found wide variation in the quality of the listening environment. In some schools, there are classrooms with excellent speech intelligibility on one floor and poor listening conditions on another. Some teachers must choose between being heard or switching the air-conditioning on and being comfortable. Background noise in some gymnasiums is so high that, even when unoccupied by a group of students it is difficult to understand what is being said.
The common thread in all these poor environments is inattention to acoustical design of the ventilation and finishes in the learning spaces. Until school boards learn to ask the design team to demonstrate that the listening environment will be as adequate as the reading environment, we will continue to "teach in the dark."
The new ANSI Classroom Acoustics Standard gives the educational community and parents a basis on which to insist that children have the benefit of being able to hear and understand their teachers.