PUBLICATION: The Toronto Star
DATE: July 24, 1997
SECTION: Life; Pg. E5
BYLINE: Jeffrey Chuang
DATELINE: U.S.
ACTIVISTS, INDIVIDUALS, AND GROUPS MENTIONED: Acoustical Society of America; Carl Crandell, audiology professor, University of Florida at Gainesville; David Lubman, chair, classroom acoustics committee at a recent Acoustical Society of America conference
The Toronto Star reports that at a recent conference of the Acoustical Society of America, experts told conference attendees that classroom noise levels are often so loud they impair childrens' speech perception, reading and spelling ability, behavior, attention, and academic performance.
The article reports that Carl Crandell, an audiology professor from the University of Florida at Gainesville, presented a summary of scientists' recent findings at the conference. He said, "Some normal children, when put in an average classroom, break down tremendously." Crandell went on to say that in a classroom that has an above-average listening environment, grade-school children with no hearing problems can make out only 71% of the words a teacher at the front of the room says. In the worst environments, according to Crandell, kids can process just 30% of the sounds. Crandell went on to say that kids don't develop an adult-like ability to understand speech until they're 15. As a result, noisy classrooms can encourage children to tune out not only extraneous noises, but also the teacher. Crandell said, "If a child cannot hear, attentional and/or behavioral problems often occur. When we can get a child to hear well, we often see a reduction or elimination of those problems."
The article says that researchers have measured classroom noise, tested children's recognition of monosyllabic words in classrooms, and interviewed teachers about classroom noise during the past several years. In addition, Crandell recently began comprehensive tests in elementary schools. The article reports that in the classrooms surveyed, many had sound intensities 30 times higher than the maximum recommended level of 35 decibels that acousticians generally agree is appropriate for a learning environment. In addition, the article notes, echoes in classrooms often persisted for a full second, which is twice as long as the cutoff suggested by the acoustical society committee to avoid interfering with teaching.
The first studies on classroom noise were prompted two decades ago by concerns for hearing-impaired children, the article reports. However, scientists have not realized until recently that many kids who did well on standard auditory tests were being adversely impacted by classroom noise as well. Crandell noted that one solution to the problem would be to install "acoustic tile" in the walls of classroom that would absorb unwanted noise.
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