5 ms·

School classrooms (20-30 people, 1-2 hours, closed windows, no ventilation) are probably worse than any conference room.

sevensor 7y ago
Apparently there was a fad for building schools with no windows. There's a 70s era middle school in the (U.S.) town where I live; it won a design award for its total lack of fenestration. It was supposed to reduce distraction or something.
- asdfman123 7y ago
  My schools were all like that. "Kids aren't paying attention to our standardized-test preparation studies! Perhaps we should make schools more like bleak prisons, and force people to spend the bulk of their formative years there! That will certainly result in a more capable general populace."
- tdumitrescu 7y ago
  My HS in central NJ had neither windows in the classrooms, nor WALLS. It was designed like a giant open office bullpen thing and classes were supposed to congregate in vaguely defined areas. By the time I got there in the early 90s, they had already erected borders everywhere out of movable chalkboards, so you basically got a traditional classroom layout but with noise pollution from all the other classes going on nearby. Great job all around. (Though I suppose from the CO2 standpoint we were probably doing better than most!)
  - vdnkh 7y ago
    Sounds like HHS. I was there in the 00s and the borders were these "permanent" accordion wall things
  - Broken_Hippo 7y ago
    The walls were part of a new teaching fad. I lived in a city that tried it out in one school. Each floor was an open plan for the classrooms. This one elementary school was their trial. The teachers had a love/hate relationship with this plan.
- jacobsenscott 7y ago
  My school was like that. I always heard it was in response to the 1970's energy crisis - windows are bad insulators.
- eeZah7Ux 7y ago
  In many countries forcing people to stay in a room with no windows would be illegal, and for good reason.
maxlybbert 7y ago
My senior year, the high school installed blowers in each classroom. We were told it was required by a new California law. I’m not sure it was an improvement: the blowers were noisy and made the classrooms much less comfortable (colder in winter, warmer in summer; it was an older school and the HVAC systems weren’t great). Teachers constantly talked about how they wanted to destroy the blowers. I seriously doubt grades improved. I wonder how previous students managed before our enlightened times.
- graeme 7y ago
  Buildings used to be much draughtier, so it wasn't so much an issue. My landlord at my old place was always adding new insulation. Co2 levels there would get really high with windows shut. My new apartment has much lower ambient co2. Both were built 100 years ago. I think people also used to leave windows open a bit, even in winter. My (Canadian) grandma always did, and I hear it was the custom in Germany. Modern buildings are made to be hermetically sealed.
  - blattimwind 7y ago
    > I hear it was the custom in Germany. At least when I went to school it was almost impossible to keep a window open except on the hottest days of summers because inevitably n>1 [almost always] girls would start to complain about draft. (edit: is draft in a room with only one opening to the outside a social construct?) That being said I always keep the window open in my office. There is no draft.
  - maxlybbert 7y ago
    When I was in elementary school, one of my classmates ended up missing school for a while because of a bad heater and carbon monoxide poisoning. That freaked me out. But everything I read was that this was a relatively new problem because newer houses were less drafty than old houses. It wasn’t clear to me (at the time) whether old houses were draftier when built, although I have to assume they were (otherwise carbon monoxide poisoning would have been just as common when those houses were new). I even remember wearing sweaters indoors when I was young. I assumed that was an effort to save money during the so-called Energy Crisis (better described as a shortage of cheap oil), but it may have just been the natural reaction to inefficient heaters and the building standards at the time.
scionthefly 7y ago
I ran a CO2 monitor in my classroom and found it exceeded 2000ppm on some occasions. Typically it would be 1200-1600. I discussed this with architects when building a new facility, and the new facility tests at <900ppm fully occupied. I think the high levels before led to worse behavior and lower academic performance. Both seem generally better now.
- lilgreenland 7y ago
  Same. I run a CO2 monitor in my classroom too. It gets up to 2000ppm very fast without the fan on.

sevensor 7y ago

Apparently there was a fad for building schools with no windows. There's a 70s era middle school in the (U.S.) town where I live; it won a design award for its total lack of fenestration. It was supposed to reduce distraction or something.

asdfman123 7y ago
My schools were all like that. "Kids aren't paying attention to our standardized-test preparation studies! Perhaps we should make schools more like bleak prisons, and force people to spend the bulk of their formative years there! That will certainly result in a more capable general populace."
tdumitrescu 7y ago
My HS in central NJ had neither windows in the classrooms, nor WALLS. It was designed like a giant open office bullpen thing and classes were supposed to congregate in vaguely defined areas. By the time I got there in the early 90s, they had already erected borders everywhere out of movable chalkboards, so you basically got a traditional classroom layout but with noise pollution from all the other classes going on nearby. Great job all around. (Though I suppose from the CO2 standpoint we were probably doing better than most!)
- vdnkh 7y ago
  Sounds like HHS. I was there in the 00s and the borders were these "permanent" accordion wall things
- Broken_Hippo 7y ago
  The walls were part of a new teaching fad. I lived in a city that tried it out in one school. Each floor was an open plan for the classrooms. This one elementary school was their trial. The teachers had a love/hate relationship with this plan.
jacobsenscott 7y ago
My school was like that. I always heard it was in response to the 1970's energy crisis - windows are bad insulators.
eeZah7Ux 7y ago
In many countries forcing people to stay in a room with no windows would be illegal, and for good reason.

maxlybbert 7y ago

My senior year, the high school installed blowers in each classroom. We were told it was required by a new California law. I’m not sure it was an improvement: the blowers were noisy and made the classrooms much less comfortable (colder in winter, warmer in summer; it was an older school and the HVAC systems weren’t great). Teachers constantly talked about how they wanted to destroy the blowers. I seriously doubt grades improved. I wonder how previous students managed before our enlightened times.

graeme 7y ago
Buildings used to be much draughtier, so it wasn't so much an issue. My landlord at my old place was always adding new insulation. Co2 levels there would get really high with windows shut. My new apartment has much lower ambient co2. Both were built 100 years ago. I think people also used to leave windows open a bit, even in winter. My (Canadian) grandma always did, and I hear it was the custom in Germany. Modern buildings are made to be hermetically sealed.
- blattimwind 7y ago
  > I hear it was the custom in Germany. At least when I went to school it was almost impossible to keep a window open except on the hottest days of summers because inevitably n>1 [almost always] girls would start to complain about draft. (edit: is draft in a room with only one opening to the outside a social construct?) That being said I always keep the window open in my office. There is no draft.
- maxlybbert 7y ago
  When I was in elementary school, one of my classmates ended up missing school for a while because of a bad heater and carbon monoxide poisoning. That freaked me out. But everything I read was that this was a relatively new problem because newer houses were less drafty than old houses. It wasn’t clear to me (at the time) whether old houses were draftier when built, although I have to assume they were (otherwise carbon monoxide poisoning would have been just as common when those houses were new). I even remember wearing sweaters indoors when I was young. I assumed that was an effort to save money during the so-called Energy Crisis (better described as a shortage of cheap oil), but it may have just been the natural reaction to inefficient heaters and the building standards at the time.

scionthefly 7y ago

I ran a CO2 monitor in my classroom and found it exceeded 2000ppm on some occasions. Typically it would be 1200-1600. I discussed this with architects when building a new facility, and the new facility tests at <900ppm fully occupied. I think the high levels before led to worse behavior and lower academic performance. Both seem generally better now.

lilgreenland 7y ago
Same. I run a CO2 monitor in my classroom too. It gets up to 2000ppm very fast without the fan on.