Learning should be enjoyable. Is it?

Well it certainly could be. What are your priorities? Should it be fun? Perhaps a pleasure then. Somewhere to meet and make friends with space to play indoors and outside.  

An interesting environment is a good start to school life, with a friendly staff and plenty to look at even before teacher arrives. Plenty of things to talk about to other pupils and get to know their views.  

We’ve talked about looking and moving, but the conventional box like classroom was recently described as ‘four grey walls, the most boring space in town’, desks and chairs crammed into the smallest space allowed. A school need not be so. And it should at least be comfortable.  

Recently we supplied chairs for a classroom in a lovely small primary school, to replace those that were being broken at the rate of 3-4 each week. Chairs described by the 7-9 year old pupils as ‘horrid and uncomfortable’.  

Chairs break for a number of reasons. They are too often both badly designed and badly made. Or they prove so uncomfortable that students either tip them forwards or backwards to relieve discomfort, putting a load on spindly legs that they were not designed to take. 

Even mild discomfort is distracting, often resulting in fidgeting together with a lack of concentration. Sometimes giving  pupils an undeserved bad reputation. (‘Sit still won’t you Carruthers!’)

Back pain is the biggest cause of absenteeism in the adult workplace, growing from near 60% five years ago, and a real concern is the growth in reported pain from school children, some as young as five. This increases in secondary schools where a ‘one size fits all’ economy in furniture choice exists, when 11 year olds can be 30-40cm shorter than 18 year olds and often more.  

Teenage girls are increasing complainants, some having serious problems leading to a life of consequential and developing pain. So what to do?  

Chairs and stools which promote an upright posture help prevent back pain  

Our increasingly sedentary population will continue to suffer back pain unless they use posturally correct desks and chairs.  

We CAN do something about this! And we should.  

Of course too much TV and use of bedroom computers, a lack of exercise, too little or the wrong sort of food all contribute, but bad posture is frequently exacerbated by poor school chairs and desks. Extensive scientific research in both Finland, and more recently in Germany, has shown that a higher seating position with a ‘waterfall’ front edge, and tilting desks resulted in students getting ‘markedly better grades’. 

No ‘rounded backs’ (kyphosis)  and no under thigh restriction to blood flow, leads to more oxygen to the brain and better results.  

Regrettably the word ‘ergonomics’ is misunderstood by many designers and manufacturers of furniture without the faintest idea of what that means.  

Encouraging students to move around the classroom, to both sit and stand to work all helps, but this needs considerable revision to the size and shape of school interiors.  

The traditional cram them into the smallest of regulation area classrooms is plainly idiotic. Rucksacks are often carried not only around the school each day and litter classroom floors, but also to and from home. Many/most bags are much too heavy for the smaller students and yet another cause of back pain for many.  

OK so now the school might at least be comfortable. And that removes the pain in seated lessons but how does this make learning actually enjoyable?  

How many of us has ever liked being told what to do, how to behave, or what we ought to know? And don’t we just prefer finding out the things we want to know. Compare how much kids remember from exploring the Science Museum for an hour with how much they remember after an hour of teaching. It works in Universities, why shouldn’t it work even better in Primary or Secondary school? An understanding of this basic truth is one reason why Scandinavian and increasingly American school standards are so much higher than many in the UK.  

The strictures of European dimensional standards over many years has not helped, due to a slowness to adapt to the increased sizes and weights of the population, let alone.  

So Architects, interiors designers and specifiers please help make learning painless. Freeing up the teachers to make learning and teaching fun! 

Article by Anthony Hill DesRCA  FRSA, Managing Director, AalborgDK Limited www.aalborgdk.com 

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