Aircon at ‘yung walang maingay at makulit.” That was the answer students gave when I asked them, “What do you need to be able to learn? Anong kailangan ninyo para matuto?” Two weeks ago, I was fortunate to be with a group of high school students attending the Aral summer program. Aral stands for Academic Recovery and Accessible Learning for K-12 students. There were at least five electric fans in the classroom. It was quite warm, but they said it was bearable because there were only 10 of them in the room. However, it was not so during the regular school year with 58 classmates.
They complained about incessant chatter and teasing specially when the teacher called on students to recite or do board work and they would get it wrong. “Ay, ang bobo,” classmates would tease. Anyone who also asked questions was also called “bobo.” Students chose to keep their questions to themselves rather than be called stupid. One student said, “Pumapasok kami para matuto at hindi para ma-insulto.”
Bullying in school continues outside the school. Bullies who were reprimanded by the teachers sought revenge and would pounce on their victims outside the school premises. Bullying alone caused some of them to skip school. This conversation with Aral high schoolers raises two serious concerns: class size in relation to thermal comfort and noise and teaching strategies that unintentionally trigger bullying.
Studies across tropical and temperate climates consistently link rising classroom temperatures to a decline in productivity. The detrimental effects of warmer conditions on students’ cognitive performance included reduced concentration and greater fatigue. A Singapore study noted the importance of optimizing thermal conditions for academic success since it observed a substantial decrease in performance test scores when temperature was elevated and air velocity was reduced.
In 2021, the Department of Health recommended that adequate airflow in schools should be controlled to ensure indoor carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations be maintained at or below 1,000 parts per million. Department of Education (DepEd) classrooms, which measure 63 square meters, meet the national minimum requirement of air space for school rooms which is 3 cubic meters with 1 square meter of floor area per person for a class of 45 learners or less. Higher indoor CO2 levels are known to reduce cognitive performance such as slower information processing, poorer concentration, and reduced problem-solving skills.
To allow good teaching and learning conditions, the World Health Organization recommends classroom noise levels not to exceed 35 dB(A) or about as quiet as a library. A classroom with 58 students can easily reach the noise level of a busy street or 65-75 dB(A). Research shows that excessive noise from student chatter and reverberation can strain teachers’ voices resulting in a range of problems from sore throat to nodules in their vocal cords.
For learners, poor acoustics can lead to learning delays, reduced attention, and lower academic performance especially for young ones. This has also affected their listening comprehension, as well as their mathematics performance. How much noise can Filipino learners and teachers bear before it affects their performance? Noise and thermal discomfort resulting from class overcrowding challenge our students’ and teachers’ well-being and extend to the issue of bullying.
When dealing with big class sizes, traditional teaching strategies can trigger bullying. Here are strategies we need to put to rest. Using reading activities such as the round-robin that put individual learners on the spot. When learners take turns to read a shared text aloud to the whole group, they risk fumbling publicly. That gives classmates an opportunity to ridicule them.
Using permanent ability groups. When learners are constantly associated with the “low group,” that can stigmatize them. Consider changing groupings from time to time based on interest and not just ability alone. Calling out mistakes aloud such as unintentionally public shaming and correcting students who recite or do board work or even reprimanding the bully aloud. The public shaming of the learners demotivates them. Reprimanding the bully in class can further intensify the bullying situation which can extend outside the classroom.
Over the years, DepEd has revised the curriculum, retrained its teachers, and even changed the number of school terms. But rarely do we think of low literacy and numeracy levels as unintended consequences of overcrowding our classrooms. As we seek solutions to address the learning crisis, we owe it to our learners and teachers—who are just powering through—to take the recommendations of the Aral high schoolers seriously.
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Marie Therese A.P. Bustos is a professor of special education at the University of the Philippines College of Education, a senior research fellow of the Assessment, Curriculum, and Technology Research Center and a member of the Second Congressional Commission on Education standing committee on basic education.