Sound in the Classroom: Why Children Need Quiet

Children are not only smaller and noisier than adults, they are immature and inefficient listeners who are developing their speech perception abilities until their teen years. Evidence shows that children have more difficulty understanding speech in noisy and reverberant rooms than do adults. Thus, when we design rooms for teaching children, it is insufficient to rely on acoustics that are good enough for adults. Instead, it is desirable to design classrooms with the special needs of children in mind. Children need low noise and reverberation, so they can hear and understand everything that is said throughtout the room. While working with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and Acoustical Society of America (ASA) Working Group on Classroom Acoustics over the past four years, I learned three important lessons.

Citation: ASHRAE Journal, vol. 45, no. 2, February 2003



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