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One morning, after dropping the kids off at school, I chatted with a neighborhood friend. At the beginning of the year she was worried about her oldest daughter. When she returned from school in the evening, the young woman was moody, sad and sometimes crying. His parents tried to understand. Harassment ? Anxiety ? The teenager ended up confessing to them that what bothered her every day was the noise. On the playground, in the lunchroom and even in class. They saw a doctor who prescribed custom-made earplugs, designed to filter out only high-pitched noises. Since then, her daughter has been using them at school and doing better. Apparently, this does not prevent him from listening to his teachers or his friends, and he is quite well accepted by those around him.
That same night, at home, my youngest daughter, who was in first grade, told me that in the refectory the counselors had inflicted collective punishment on them because they made too much noise. At daycare, my son is regularly invited to play king of silence in the dining room. And, again recently, my eldest daughter, this year in CM1, told me that she had spent the day in the small section because her teacher was absent (my children are in a school that combines preschool and primary school). “I took a French test, but it was difficult to concentrateshe told me, because the little ones made a lot of noise. »
Do our children live in a sound environment that is painful or even unbearable for some of them? When I brought it up in the office, a colleague told me that his daughter loved going to her father’s work because it was “quiet and quiet”. This is quite ironic, given the countless complaints and uproar caused by the newspaper’s move to a building in full open spacethat is, without any partition.
Up to 90 decibels in the canteen.
However, it is very true: our open space is much quieter than a school cafeteria, and even than classrooms. Chiara Simeone is an acoustician at Acoustique et Conseil, in Paris. Their work consists, on the one hand, of ensuring that new buildings comply with current standards – such as those applied to educational establishments since the decree of April 25, 2003 – and, on the other hand, of isolating old buildings. in to improve your comfort. He carried out sound measurements in around thirty schools in the Yvelines. Result: in the dining rooms we can be at 70 decibels, with peaks of 80 or 90. “In an open space office, Is it offered for comparison? We are on average at 55 or 60 decibels. »
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