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Classrooms Across America
This is the standard classroom setting you
will see across the United States – basically prison architecture. Harsh
florescent lighting, often no or very few windows, gross acoustical tile drop
ceilings, and cheap carpet that has tears in it or these sleek polished floors
that you slip and fall on when you are rushing from one side of the school to
the other in the 5 minutes you have to exchange classes.
How is this type of building supposed to
engage students and promote learning? You wonder why students are falling
asleep in class, misbehaving, and disrupting the class? Well, perhaps it has to
do with the failed way we treat the interiors of these classrooms. I know we
often do not have the funding to make upgrades to schools until they have no
other option or it is hard the change these CMU block buildings post
construction or the poor layouts or just trying to cram as many students as
they can into one building to teach them basic knowledge, but this is not a
learning environment that caters to the students’ or the teachers’ needs.
I agree, it seems that once someone had developed the typical set-up, everyone else began to replicate it without thinking twice about how disengaging the space is. Because of how versatile a school's needs are, the building should be set up to be easily reconfigured for more functional, and better quality spaces.
ReplyDeleteMy high school had a pretty interesting layout as it was compiled of seven small buildings in a "campus" layout that forced us to walk outside between buildings when we changed classes and there were covered walkways across most of the campus when it was raining or there was snow on the ground. There were double loaded corridors with long, narrow rectangular buildings. The corridor walls were CMU but the exterior walls had storefront glazing, steel windows, and awning windows to permit natural ventilation when the weather was nice outside. I think this was a clever solution of the architects that permitted as much natural light as possible while still being affordable for tight school budgets.
ReplyDeleteI think you could find a lot of evidence based design articles regarding daylighting in schools to improve test scores, help with teacher/employee satisfaction rates, and reduce school absentee rates.
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