The heat is having a slow and cruel effect on the teenagers in Sarah Mueller’s high school chemistry class in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the United States. 7:30 am, The classroom temperature can reach approximately 29 degrees Celsius. (84 degrees Fahrenheit). Muller tries to keep the students’ spirits up by joking with them. “People pay a lot of money for saunas, and we get it for free,” he says. He estimates he has spent at least $1,000 of his own money on ventilators over the years. And it’s still not enough. At the end of the day, Your students are sweaty, tired and unable to concentrate., “It is against the Geneva Conventions to try to get someone to know about a wide variety of matters,” Mueller complains.
Scorching heat and humidity hit schools across the United States last week, as young people returned for the new school year. When temperatures reached 90 °F (32 °C) during the first week of September, students in Detroit, Michigan and Newark, New Jersey had to leave school early; In Muller’s district, Schools without air conditioning resorted to distance learning for two days, in a measure that was reminiscent of the distance learning of the COVID-19 emergency. Schools are becoming increasingly hotter, and teaching and learning in them are becoming impossible.
Heat affects the brain in many ways
First of all, Being too hot distracts you, If a child is sweating bullets during a heat wave, he is not concentrating properly on the exam in front of him. Mueller says her students have a hard time raising their heads from their desks during the summer, let alone focusing on a lesson on lab safety.
From a physical point of view, Young people are more vulnerable heat pressure, because their bodies are still developing. Of course, the body sweats to avoid overheating. But it diverts some blood from the organs to the skin, releasing heat into the surrounding air. This is why the skin turns red in hot weather. This can lead to a lack of oxygen in some tissues, which in turn leads to cognitive impairment, The same can happen with teachers who overwork, which can reduce the quality of their teaching during the summer.
“When not enough blood (with too much hemoglobin and oxygen) reaches the brain, We can’t concentrate, we can’t think And we can’t learn as effectively as we should,” says Tarik Benmarhaniya, an environmental epidemiologist at the University of California, San Diego. ”Obviously, concentration is not a priority, because the body is working very, very hard to try. Cool down. temperature, that is Priority”.
Children with asthma are especially at risk., because high temperatures cause the formation of ozone, which irritates the respiratory tract. While less disruptive, this annoyance further distracts students with asthma. But if the asthma attack increases, extreme heat can even send them to the hospital. This is not only dangerous, but it also disrupts their school education.
the brain doesn’t like heat
Heat waves increase risk of mental health problems, such as mood and anxiety disorders, and it is well known that they increase aggression. Professor Mueller of Pittsburgh believes Fights happen more often when it’s hot on your campus, For example, last week, two incidents happened on the same day.
Prolonged heat waves are particularly harmful because Prevent students from resting at night and returning to class comfortably, Children who do not have air conditioning at home are already hot when they wake up. Therefore, many of them go to school on foot in the heat or in an uncomfortable bus. They don’t sleep well, so they’re very tired when they go to school, which compounds all these problems,” explains Benmarhaniya. Children, especially teenagers, need a lot of sleep and Good To incorporate learning, but also to be prepared for the next day.