Schools Beat Earlier Plagues With Outdoor Classes | Hacker News Reader

Schools Beat Earlier Plagues With Outdoor Classes

nytimes.com

117 pointssylvainkalache130 comments

That's a troubling thought down here in eastern Georgia, where it has been in the high 90F (35-37C) range for the past few weeks, with heat index north of 100F (38-40C), and no shortage of humidity. And that's not even remotely as bad as it gets closer to the Gulf coast.

And it stays pretty unbearable until late October or so.

Yes, I know the article wasn't insinuating that the entire country, regardless of climactic region, should hold outdoor classes. But enough of the US sits below "unbearable" latitudes enough of the year that I don't think this suggestion has much applicability beyond what is explicitly considered "the north". Besides, I've been to New York City in August and September before; depending on the day, the heat, and especially the humidity, can give the South a run for its money.

They had schools before air conditioning. All we had when I was a kid were big oscillating fans on the wall, and that was the 1990’s. I think Georgia will have it easy, because winter will be the real impediment.

While I'm sure the kids could survive if given shade and water, I'd have to imagine completing assignments on a school-issued Chromebook or iPad at home where it is climate controlled is a far better learning environment than in triple digit heat index temps or the cold winter in northern states. Sure, there will be certain places and times where this might work, but probably not Georgia in the summer.

A reasonable portion of my K-12 education lacked AC. It's pretty difficult to focus on materials and learning when you're sweating or nearly sweating and about to fall asleep to help reduce your core body temperature.

It's not very conducive for learning. Take some cognitively demanding task you have to do or struggle with and then try doing it in sweltering heat. At least for me, my patience recedes very quickly and I'm far more concerned with my immediate discomfort than I am dancing through some abstract ideas, making it very difficult to focus.

I disagree, even by 2010 our school was planning around seriously hot days in August and September for football. Couldn't imagine that time period without the ice cold AC we had inside the school (this is SC)

They had schools before year after year climate-change induced temperature increases and erratic weather as well. Conditions change and we change with them.

>They had schools before air conditioning

And they didn't have school on hot days. Source: My school had no air conditioning outside of the nurse's office until I was in high school. If the temperature was above 89, school was cancelled for the day.

What? None of my primary or secondary schools ever had a/c and I always went to school no matter the temperature, sometimes when it was over 90°. It was uncomfortable but it's not like I knew any different.

We also didn't start school until after Labor Day, instead of the middle of August.

I didn't start school until September.

In my part of world, 89 is considered pleasant. Once it crosses 105, people will make some noise.

Our high temperatures are usually accompanied by humidity levels in the 85-95% range. 85 with a 90% humidity is just awful.

What about evening classes?

For other cooler areas of the country, perhaps winters off, but not summers?

In my area (Western Ohio, US) there would be a risk of the children being lifted and carried away (or just sucked dry) by the hordes of mosquitoes that come out in the evenings when it begins to get cool.

Would large tents + mosquito netting be a viable workaround?

Where I am, the Pacific NW, the coolest parts of the day are (roughly) 2:00 AM through 10:00 AM. On 100F days it is still 90F at 8:00 PM, and the peak is around 4:00 PM. I’m not sure evening classes would change much, unless the temperature profile is drastically different in other parts of the country.

Temperature profiles are drastically different in different parts of the country. In low humidity areas, it does cool down in the evening. I've lived in San Jose and I remember noting how different that was from the humid east coast.

Wind patterns near the ocean can have the same effect in some places.

Exactly. This idea has merit and is worth thinking about. But in much of the Sun Belt, with some of the worst-hit states, it's going to be pretty hard to do until October or so: if it's not temp + humidity, it's sheer temp alone (like here in the Southwest). Not to mention we're in thunderstorm season. This can only be done with suitable outdoor spaces, which do not exist yet in sufficient quantities, and there's not enough time or money to build it now in time for August opening.

(I'll admit I only skimmed the article. It may have addressed some or all of these points.)

Speaking as someone who: 1) lives in a Sun Belt state (Texas) 2) went to grade school in an un-airconditioned building

Yes, it could be done, and should be considered. However, school years used to start at Labor Day, for this reason, and there were a lot of serious metal-bladed fans to make it bearable. Even outside, you would need shade (perhaps canopies?) and fans.

It was also a lower population density than modern urban schools. All that body heat makes a difference.

However, definitely worth considering, and in many non-urban areas I believe it could work.

>Even outside, you would need shade (perhaps canopies?) and fans.

I imagine fans may be problematic due to the way COVID19 primarily spreads. You might be able to design your way out of it with clever fan and student placement but without that, you might create highways for the virus to spread from one student to the next.

Well, a ceiling fan producing laminar flow is very likely to limit the spread. Side fans and windows, unlikely. The have been a few good studies of airflow dynamics.

Ultimately the best cheapest defense building wise would be airflow over 12 CFM in a top to bottom way. This is essentially an air curtain strength.

That's rather expensive and takes a lot of big fans or very strong HVAC system with many air outlets.

Being outside only works as long as you can spread people out heavily enough. It's better than unventilated buildings, but the benefit is overshadowed by density or distance.

(See: Florida beach policy and cases after the delay.)

Having worked in semiconductor fabs with laminar flow, I can say that it dries your eyes out if you're not wearing goggles.

The spread can be bisected into two parts:

1. Droplets directly exhaled. This is the stuff that you mask for.

2. Particles suspended in air. This is why staying indoors is particularly dangerous; it tends to hang around and build up without being vented.

The virus dies quickly outside of droplets and in direct sunlight: this is why being outside is low risk given masks and distancing. Either it's coughed on you, or it dies within minutes.

An indoors area that circulates its air quickly is almost as good, provided UV is part of the process. Fans are mostly a good idea in this respect and one could imagine an indoors "UV gate" through which air is pushed to disinfect it. I would not be surprised if the idea already exists.

A lot of our schools (Florida) used to have huge windows that could be opened, breezeways to funnel the air, etc. Now schools are built like prisons. I get that it might be safer for the kids in some respect, but good grief.

And, yes, schools here also used to start later due to the heat.

I too went to grade school in un-airconditioned building. IIRC, I think we started school 4-5 days before Labor Day. We did not have any fans in the classrooms, but we did have a large number of windows on one side of the room that would be left open when it was hot. Our water fountains dispensed tap water too (not refrigerated or filtered).

I may take some heat for saying this, but I also think that people were generally tougher back then as compared to now. What I mean by that is that people had less comforts and were consequently more accustomed to being uncomfortable. It was normal. In my experience, my body adapts and gets conditioned to the climate over time. After some period of time in a particular climate, your body gets used to it (the new normal).

I agree that it's worth considering. I think that there would be a lot of complaining and discomfort at first, but it would be quickly resolved.

When I was growing up, my town's schools went through a phase where they were all remodeled/rebuilt. The necessity drove the school district into bankruptcy lol.

Being a coastal town in California, the weather is pleasant for all but a few weeks to a month of the year. For that time period, the weather is hot and miserable. All the windows open and the fans on won't help much, but it's the same at home. Hardly anyone has AC at home here, so whatever.

When the schools were remodeled, all of the classrooms gained air conditioning. In the older schools with the huge windows and the outdoor corridors, the AC units were mounted above the corridors. The windows on that side were sealed off. The windows on the other side were replaced with fat tinted windows that barely opened compared to the old ones. The remodeled campuses are a lot gloomier than the old ones because they're loud and the air in the classrooms is stale. They're also dimmer because of the tinted windows.

When I was a senior in high school I made a point of asking our English teacher every day if we could go outside. Rain, shine, snow, whatever. It became a running joke. Finally, towards the end of the year, on a lovely Spring day, she agreed we could go outside.

But there was a catch: we had a pop quiz. 20% of the grade was some question about a book we read. The other 80% was to write a short essay: Explain the educational benefits of going outside.

This is precisely what my children's school is doing right now, and consequently they've had much greater adoption from parents of sending their children back to school. 75% vs the county average of 33%.

large pavilions with picnic tables, lighting, and fans works well and we should be building them all over our communities.

They're cheap to build, keep everyone dry, shaded, and reasonably cool. It's obviously not as good as air conditioning, but I've worked under them when on a camp staff in central Georgia during some extremely hot summers in the '90s (and the 90s/100s F) and it is tolerable for most people.

Brief research tells me the construction cost is generally under $25k which is a blip in most education budgets. As a bonus we have more outdoor community space when we manage to get past this.

added and out of the edit time:

Even if these were only around existing school property and different classes used just morning or evening the kids could still get some instruction, the parents could have a brief break, and get food (and God forbid some other help for the kids at risk) for the children who need it. We'd be in a much better place than we are now thinking that young elementary kids can do virtual learning.

This would go a long way with getting us through most/all autumn in much of the US.

Wouldn't earlier plagues been in times of ubiquitous stay at home mothers as well? Surely a good chunk of kids just got home schooled.

Possibly, but my great great grandparents were school aged in New York in the late 1800s. There were 10+ kids and 2 adults in the family. Mom might have been at home, but she was busy.

The kids can teach each other, as was done in small "one room" schools of the past.

>>Surely a good chunk of kids just got home schooled.

This was before widespread laundry machines and dishwashers. Those "stay at home mothers" worked. School was, and still is, in part a babysitting service. If the kids were to stay at home they would have been helping mom, not asking her for reading lessons.

This was also a time of increasing literacy and education overall. Illiteracy was not uncommon. There is a good chance that many parents were simply not as well educated as their school-age children. Homeschooling is all well and good, unless mom cannot read.

Then how did moms get by when kids were in school not helping?

I'm sure some parents or school studenta were illiterate, but not the majority.

And families were larger, so they'd have multiple children to teach each other.

>Then how did moms get by when kids were in school not helping?

They got by better because children were in school. If you don't have to keep an eye on your kids, you can commit 100% to all the housework and get it done that much sooner.

They were productive with or without the children around. The point is that there was no productivity to spare for mother and child to do any teaching/learning.

Some good ideas exist in this article. I could see this strategy implemented in my district as one of several starting in the Fall. But it's not going to be easy.

I'm in New England. The sheer number of students and the percentage of them who have inadequate Winter clothing and food would make the strategy impossible to implement as a one size fits all approach.

A quick search shows that my school district has 10,479 students. The number of students on free or reduced price lunch is a good indicator of access to adequate Winter clothing as well. We have 44% of the students on free or reduced price lunch. To implement a strategy of windows open or outdoor classrooms, we would have to account for 4,610 students' Winter clothing needs for temperatures ranging from 0F-55F.

Some communities have much higher percentages of students on free and reduced price lunch. A quick look at a neighbor city 15 minutes' drive to the north shows 95% on free or reduced price lunch.

Districts less affected by poverty could probably implement an outdoor or windows open strategy. But a mountain of logistics exist in trying to implement in communities like mine. Unfortunately, in our county, communities like mine are the norm.

Or online. Cheaper and less frostbite for kids in places with extreme winter conditions.

I have a rambunctious 4yo entering kindergarten this year. He needs direct attention of a present human, not a screen to watch.

I am sure a Border Collie could deal with him no issue and I don't think dogs can get Covid-19.

Many of us live in rental accomodation that have no-pets rules.

Good point, but many people are making changes due to a radically different lifestyle. Moving to new places to find work, moving out of cities for more space and lower rent/cheaper house. It's not reasonable to expect you get through this without making lifestyle changes.

From https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/...

We know that cats, dogs, and a few other types of animals can be infected with SARS-CoV-2

The purpose of kindergarten is to prepare children for a classroom environment, including interpersonal skills. If you think a border collie is capable of that, I've got a talking horse to sell you.

The limited data I've seen is that online learning wasn't effective compared to in person classes. Now admittedly that was an natural experiment conducted in the worst way possible, but it certainly matches my experience that young kids thrive most with at least some in person learning.

Utilizing outdoor space is a good idea until late fall in the northern US, and possible due most of the school year in places with moderate climate.

Traffic noise is a problem for many schools in urban areas — another reason you don’t want to open windows or teach outside.

Moreover, some schools have only small 100% paved outdoor areas.

Example: Ánimo Westside Charter Middle School (funded by Gates Foundation) https://goo.gl/maps/Wn2bu5kkh97Ygqt88

Nearby public elementary school adjacent to nature area, with ample unpaved space, somewhat less noisy, bit still problematic. Playa Vista Elementary https://goo.gl/maps/tydUVn1X9ppB7p699

(Not complaining about charter schools, but this is an interesting juxtaposition, unrelated to the main point of this topic.)

Unfortunately, I doubt any schools in my neck of the woods could seriously consider that. North-midwestern winters are very uncomfortable.

In my neck of the woods, it’s not too uncommon to find year-round outdoor seating at restaurants thanks to radiative heaters. Mind you, I’ve never tried one of these when it’s colder than maybe 45 F. But do you think something like that is feasible?

Northern midwest US - up until January, probably. I don't think they'd be terribly effective in late January or most of February.

Having grown up in Minnesota, come late January and early February, on the days when the high temperatures are under 0F/-18 C, putting a child out there for 8 hours under a radiant heater, I think you might actually melt hats/coat hoods before you fully prevent frostbitten toes. Even if you can keep the whole kid at reasonable temperatures, I think it would just be very distracting.

Also, for that power/propane bill, you're probably better off with either per-desk transparent positive-pressure medical isolation tents or full-face snorkel masks fitted with 3D printed adapters to ceramic-element anesthesia machine air filters.

In addition, kids play. Some small percentage of those kids are going to get burned by heaters.

Grew up in Wisconsin, this wouldn't work at all. I've been around a roaring bonfire in winter. There's a massive temperature difference a few feet in any direction. It's far too easy to overheat or freeze if you aren't paying attention. Any amount of wind makes this more complicated.

Radiative heating outside, in winter only works if you have some kind of shelter to reflect and contain the heat. Even then you have to be mindful of your environment.

Conversely, with kids in the southeast getting ready to go back in a few weeks, there is no way we could do outdoor classes with temps getting into triple digits with the heat index.

How did they have school before air conditioning in the region? It must be possible. Maybe not for kids with certain conditions.

I'm sure it was still uncomfortable, but the building likely had much different ventilation.

Buildings were designed differently, and society worked differently. Buildings now are designed to be sealed against the elements, where before A/C they were designed to maximize exposure to airflow. Things like lanais, Bahama shutters, crawl spaces, dogtrot houses, etc were all strategies for blocking sun and improving airflow. Even passive solar strategies existed, like using large deciduous trees to block sun in the summer and allow it in the winter. On the societal side, there was less expectation for society to keep moving during midday heat, sometimes explicitly formalized like the Spanish siesta.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/07/keepi...

EDIT: Can't believe I forgot about solar chimneys and evaporative coolers (aka swamp coolers).

Many newer buildings are shifting back towards being “breathable” to cut energy costs.

Can you point me to anything? I'd love to learn more about that. I'm not sure how that would work when the outside air is absolutely hotter than desired. We still do things like airflow through attics, because that's above the ceiling insulation and the outside air often is cooler than attic air.

Well, I should provide a disclaimer that I’m only really aware of California buildings that do this, which might answer the “how does this work in general” question :P

Ah, yea. There's definitely climates in California where that would work. I'm in Tampa Bay, and during the summer there's very few times when you would want outside air coming in. Even if it's OK temperature-wise, humidity is always there. I've open windows to take advantage of cool air during storms, but I also know I have an A/C that will act as a full-house dehumidifier.

Indoor classes without air conditioning are uncomfortable, but bearable for most people. When I was in HS in a school that still today doesn't have AC kids passing out from overheating happened once every other week or so. I fault that more to our administration trying to force assemblies and not listening to kids who were obviously overheating and needed to step out of class than the building. There was a stupid sort of comradery between the us and the teachers during those months, not unlike the scene in Matilda, because having to wear thick wool jumpers or long sleeved shirts and slacks was absolutely moronic. Like the whole point was too look "presentable" but let me tell you boys who soaked through their dress shirts was not a good look for the school.

Outdoor classes where you don't have the benefit of good ventilation, shade, and your only area large enough to hold outdoor classes might be a blacktop is going to be a little rougher. Without having the building to act as a wind tunnel constantly moving the hot air out you have no chance when the wind dies down.

Summer school, winter break for you.

Can one seriously compare COVID-19 to a TB plague? Especially in context of schools where mortality rate for the school aged appears to be less than any seasonal flu on record.

> Especially in context of schools where mortality rate for the school aged appears to be less than any seasonal flu on record.

There is no good data to back that up. Since we've been keep track, most kids have been staying home, away from other kids. Schools have been closed, playgrounds have been closed, and so on.

There is a good chance it doesn't affect them as much, but it's not entirely clear since they haven't been socializing as much as adults.

The data we do have says that COVID-19 is 3 times deadlier than the flu for kids 5-17, and 190 times deadlier for kids 0-4, but that's because the numbers are small: https://i.insider.com/5ef234caf34d051bc821d0d8?width=700&for...

Also, lots of adults work in schools. 1/3 of teachers in the US are over 50.

All kids live with adults, and they get high exposure to the virus when their family gets infected. From this we know that kids have a low mortality rate.

Conversely, their parents and grand parents get infected by the little plague carriers returning from the plague pit and general viral exchange facility that is school.

And the grand parents and obese parents are vulnerable as all merry hell.

Nope.

In Iceland, they did extensive testing, and genetic tracing of infections.

Children infecting other children was extremely rare. In almost all cases, it was adults infecting them.

There was only a SINGLE case of a child infecting an adult.

https://www.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/blog/hunting-down-covi...

Could this simply be because schools were closed? If there is no child 2 child interaction, there cannot be an infection via this vector.

Lockdown effectively places every family into its own bubble. Family members can only get infected by someone interaction with the outside world. If the kids stay home and only the adults interact with the outside world, than we would expect to see basically zero child 2 child infections.

Schools and kindergartens were never closed in Iceland for children under 16.

There is a study from South Korea that says kids from 10 and up can spread the virus just as well as adults.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/heal...

Has a statistical analysis been done or are you reasoning inductively?

No, at this point we can be pretty certain that this disease doesn't affect young children as badly as flu. Plenty of kids have tested positive for COVID19, but almost none have died. This disease is so pervasive we'd see excess showing up in that age group and we just don't. Kids just don't seem to get as sick as adults.

What we don't know is how effective kids are as transmission vectors. If COVID19 spreads rapidly through a school and kids can get thier caretakers sick, thats a real problem. The limited data we have in suggests that not only do young kids not have limited disease, they also don't spread it easily, but all the data I've seen is almost anecdotal.

The long term effects of flu are known. The long term effects of Covid-19 on any demographic are unknown. Polio killed less than 2000 people per year prior to the development of the vaccine, but impacted many more.

> No, at this point we can be pretty certain that this disease doesn't affect young children as badly as flu

That's just straight up wrong. According to the CDC, as of June 23, COVID-19 was three times deadlier than the flu for kids 5-17, and 190 times deadlier for kids 0-4:

https://i.insider.com/5ef234caf34d051bc821d0d8?width=700&for...

That chart is extremely misleading. You can't compare estimated flu cases and deaths with confirmed COVID19 cases and deaths.

Mea culpa, I had the <1 numbers of flu in my head as the <10 number- I shouldn't have said "as badly". However, those charts aren't great- as someone else noted comparing estimated flu numbers with confirmed COVID cases is problematic. In my local region, a randomized serology study suggested that we have at least 3x as many infections as confirmed cases, and a raw extrapolation of deaths to IFR rates suggests its even higher.

It's best to say "the fatality rate is near the same order as the flu for school age children"

This is not true. The experiment has been run. In June, 47% of COVID cases in Israel were from schools. The schools there are now closed.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/israeli-data-show-school-openi...

The road from anti-coronavirus paradigm to rampant infection in this country of 9 million people followed two months of almost total lockdown. May 17 also was the day Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former rival Benny Gantz swore in their “corona emergency government,” whose sole declared purpose is to fight the spread of the virus. Netanyahu’s decree that the nation’s entire school system would reopen was a political flourish to signal everything was under control.

One would think that coronavirus was one of those mind-control fungi that makes you do stupid things that increase its spread.

There are several other studies that are indicating that spread isn't as high among children as adults. See https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/children-over-age-...

The article is arguing a point, but it also links to a lot of the other papers I've seen.

Note that "not as transmissible" doesn't mean "not transmissible". It's entirely possible for the disease to be harder to transmit in kids but still be enough to sustain community spread. I think we don't know yet.

That's not a full-throated endorsement of reopening schools, but it should inform a risk/reward based approach to what institutions should close or open and when.

Sure, look at the risks and the rewards. It's quite clear that if we run the fall semester in person, we will get a burn-through. It's not so much of a risk as it is a cost.

Currently, the virus is out of control. We might be able to bring it back under control. The Israeli experience suggests that, since half their cases were from schools, opening schools doubles R. There's no measure that will be realistically implemented in the next month that would cut R in half.

It could be that this is the least bad of a set of options. Convince me.

> There's no measure that will be realistically implemented in the next month that would cut R in half

Universal masking can cut R substantially, but it requires high levels of compliance [1]

[1] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2020.037...

That’s why I say realistically. You could do a $50 billion blitz campaign to promote/provide masks, and you could increase usage, but the holdouts now are the ones that are difficult to convince.

Schools are a particular problem. Getting kids to consistently and correctly wear masks is hard. Getting kids to follow social distancing rules is hard too.

Bringing a bunch of poorly compliant people together to sit in the same room with 25 other people is gonna be a big challenge.

Covid is more deadly then flu in literally any age group. It also takes more time to cure. Kids do handle covid better then adults, but kids do handle flu better then adults too.

We do know that kids can be transmission vectors and there is nothing to suggest they cant be.

Also, reports out of Florida are showing that 1/3 of the kids have lung damage on x-rays, even if they were 'asymptomatic.' It's not clear if that damage will be permanent.

TL;DR - "doesn't kill you" might still maim you for life

The bar for spreading fear-mongering like this should be considerably higher than some unknown "reports out of Florida".

There have been plenty of reports if you'd like more specifics; e.g.

- https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200622-the-long-term-ef...

- https://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/article/coronavirus-long-t...

- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53269391

- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/06/corona...

These are scattered media reports.

“We don’t know yet if the encephalopathy is more severe with Covid-19 than with other viruses, but I can tell you we’ve been seeing quite a lot of it"

That is probably the type of information we should be taking from these media reports. Given that there are over 14 million cases globally, we should be looking for patterns that impact tens of thousands, not edge cases that impact dozens or hundreds. With such a closely-studied and brand new disease, we are bound to find a lot of interesting and worrying cases. There are plenty of rare symptoms from other diseases too, we just don't talk about them much because they are not new and they are rare.

What is important from a public health standpoint isn't just the impact (which mortality rate is a small subset of) among the school aged but the propensity for propagation among a population and conditions like that found in schools (which, for.thr population side, isn't exclusively the school aged.)

It's about the transmission.

Since there is a lot of proof the current virus is airborne it helps to be in the open air or at least have a good ventilation system.

Schools could beat the spreading of the virus with well ventilated classrooms.

And for that matter: the US could beat the virus with good ventilated rooms. Note that dry air from airconditioners helps airosols to keep floating.

Without fress air: wear a mask!

Obviously, easier said than done, especially for urban communities.

But I bet students could have better learning outcome, considering that indoor space are often poorly ventilated and have an excess of CO2 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/06/health/conference-room-ai...

This is just a Red Herring. The solution is not outdoor classes, redesigned schools or open windows but good governance. American's have convinced themselves that electing smart people who are skilled at government is a bad thing and that electing populist morons who will say anything to get elected is the path we should be taking. Had Hillary Clinton been elected, Americans would not be in this situation and we would not be taking about these pointless side issues. The US would have dealt with this pandemic issue months ago and not talking about these Red Herring pointless topics. Just a distraction and chasing miracle cures that don't exist.

That's a great idea ( in some areas) actually

I've got a feeling that children are more likely to pay attention outside

Also, the fact that many schools in the US have classes with no windows should be made illegal, when I first heard about that I thought it was a joke (until I saw some photos). The communists did a lot of things wrong in my country when they came to power after WW2 but one of the things that they did do right was to build lots and lots of new schools, and every one of the classes in those schools had big windows by mandated design, not just as an afterthought.

Do you have any of those photos? I find it hard to believe.

I am surprised about your comment. What do you find hard to believe? I am from (western) Germany, and I find it hard to believe, that there are class rooms without windows. Except for one or two special purpose rooms, in my school time, I have never ever seen a class room, which didn't have windows on one long side. The other long side would be towards the hallway. The rooms almost never needed artificial lighting (unless in the first hour in the Winter or really bad weather) and plenty of fresh air when opening the window. Daylight and fresh air are the best ways to keep the pupils awake.

It 's "not having windows in the US" part that is surprising, not the "having windows in Germany".

I live in the US, I don't think my highschool had windows in any of its classrooms. They're may have been one or two that I don't remember, but the majority only had a "window" in the door that was a small rectangle, about 6 inches wide and 2 feet tall. Some didn't even have that, or the teacher had it covered with poster board.

Is it specific to schools or is it common to have many rooms in buildings without windows?

Rooms designed for presentations often don’t have windows so that they can be easily darkened for projectors to work better. Where I grew up, it was quite common for classrooms to have an overhead projector [1] equipped with a long scroll of transparent film. The instructor would give their lecture sitting at the projector and writing on the film instead of at a blackboard.

[1] https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overhead_projector#/media/...

Since the other commenter didn't answer your question even remotely.. It's mostly schools that are lacking windows. Most places (that my tired brain can think of) at least have a window, not necessarily one that opens though. Might be different for other places, only speaking from personal experience.

Our high school had many interior classrooms with no windows, and the perimeter classrooms only had one or two small ones each. It was relatively new (at the time) so was built with air conditioning in mind.

Sorry, then I misunderstood you. I thought your request was to see photos of classrooms with with windows.

I'm from the US and classrooms without windows were very common in public schools. I didn't know this was surprising or unusual.

I'm from the US and went to public schools in the midwest. The only rooms I can think of that didn't have windows were: the theatres (read big and small auditoriums), and the science labs. Heck, if you had a class on the first floor they usually had doors on the wall with windows leading outside too.

It depends on the region, the age of the school, the wealth and demographics of the community. The poorer the area, its more likely the schools are overcrowded concrete boxes built in the 60s-80s.

US Schooling is very inconsistent and varies a huge amount by municipality.

All the schools I attended here in Scotland had huge windows - both in Victorian era builings and ones built in the 1970s.

Day dreaming looking out the windows at the hills or sea was a favourite activity of mine!

On mobile, but I was kinda shocked to see it when I lived in Pittsburgh. Google “Obama Academy Pittsburgh” for one example, but I was not at all alone in the area.

It was a photo posted by a user from his actual classroom on a reddit thread some time ago, don't have that exact link available anymore, but a very quick search drove me to this more recent reddit thread [1] which describes the same issue.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Teachers/comments/6kcily/my_new_cla...

My high school got renovated with another row of classrooms next to the original two. So a bunch of classrooms lost their windows. It went from 1 hallway to 2 parallel hallways.

I could probably dig some up from high school, but I think they're all on an external drive. And none of them are panoramic, of course.

But yup, many rooms had no windows; just a big cinderblock room, the only window being by the door, opening into the hallway.

Most schools have all the classrooms on a perimeter so they get light. If there's a courtyard there will likely be classrooms on the interior as well. Rooms without windows tend to be intentionally reserved for things like artistic use (no windows to open to screw with humidity that some materials might not like), music (you can plaster all the walls in sound deadening.

You don't tend to get windowless classrooms until decades after the building was built and the school is simply making due with the facilities they have in light of their changing needs. They'll shove a math class in a former art room or something.

Back in the day windowless rooms were somewhat coveted because everyone had lesson plans on transparencies and they'd teach using the overhead projector the way some teachers use a PowerPoint today. Being able to turn down the lights (and not have the sun defeat your efforts) and then have the projector be the main focus helps keep the class on-task and keeps the teacher in better control of rowdy classes because the people who would drift off topic and engage in distracting chit-chat tend to drift off to sleep instead.

My elementary schools were 1) L-shaped single story with classrooms ringing the exterior perimeter, 2) traditional 5 story brick with an atrium so both interior and exterior rooms got natural light. Middle school was single story again. High school was traditional 3 story brick. The only rooms without natural light were basement rooms (for band, theatre & ROTC) under the auditorium, which I think was 100% acceptable.

FWIW, it's "make do", not "make due", due and do are not homophones in British English

My school in the US had no windows in quite a few classrooms. I guess that’s what happens when you take an empty building designed for offices and divide it up into classrooms. It also had terrible ventilation. Many rooms would absolutely stink with the humidity unleashed from pubescent armpits, and the air conditioning was not up to the task.

I'd go as far as to say that it is inhumane to deprive people of natural light without a very good reason. It's got to be psychologically harmful to some level?

I personally wouldn't even accept a short-term contract that involved spending a large proportion of my time away from natural light.

I personally wouldn't mind. A life on a nuclear submarine sounds interesting to me.

Anything to avoid actually eradicating the virus, as many other countries have done now.

So students should be expected to operate in hundred-degree heat? It's well-know heat harms focus and productivity. This is fine for kids in new york who can just bundle up against the cold, but one can only do so much against heat in places like Texas where temps can top 110.

Come on, this obviously depends on where you are- the article is a New York city newspaper talking about new york and the northeast.

You can't do outdoor classes in Texas in August, but by late September or October it becomes totally feasible.

To add to this: the article was published in the "metropolitan" section this weekend. It's very much intended to be local.

No amount of bundling will work for Minnesota winters. About once a year school gets cancelled state wide due to it being too cold for kids to even wait for a bus.

It is unhelpful to only look at risks due to covid without looking at those risks in comparison to others. Optimizing for least covid problems may cause death or morbidity due to other things to actually cause more damage.

Hospitalization rates in the US for covid is:

0% for 10 and under

.1% for 10 - 20

In the US, the number of deaths for covid is:

20 (total!) for 0 - 14

125 (total!) for 15 - 24

By comparison, suicide caused 514 deaths for 10-14 year olds, and 6500 deaths for 15-24 year olds in 2017.

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide.shtml

By comparison, the CDC estimates that around 600 children died of the flu in 2017/2018.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/highrisk/children.htm

That rather disregards the adults who will be required to be in close proximity to all of these children during the day, and the adults who will be caring for these children when they’re home.

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