Column | Miss Femke’s noisy class

Once upon a time there was a very noisy school. Maybe you know the sound of children playing in a schoolyard, echoing between the houses in the street. You can imagine that a schoolyard full of children playing can sound unpleasantly shrill. But usually it doesn’t last long. When the bell rings at the end of playtime, it quickly becomes quiet again.

But this school was a completely different story. This school was so loud that the sound went through my bones. All day long. One child screamed even louder than the other. Even inside the classroom, the noise continued, with the windows wide open. It drove the school neighbors crazy. They could no longer read a book or watch TV in peace. Or working outside in the garden, you didn’t have to think about it. They walked desperately for days with their fingers in their ears. Really, this school was bad for the health of the entire neighborhood.

Even nature suffered from the noise of the school. Birds, which also like to whistle along to a tune, preferred to stay away. They couldn’t even understand each other. Then it becomes difficult to attract a female and build a nest. The sound of the school was also too much for the worms, butterflies and beetles. That’s why fungi grew everywhere in the trees. If you looked closely, the leaves were covered in aphids. No, things were not going well with nature in the area.

But how could this school be so noisy? To understand that, you need to know something about Miss Femke’s class. Miss Femke is the teacher of a very large class, full of special children. Two brothers and their nephews from the De Boer family. Three children of the Van Kalveren family. A lot of offspring from the Terstal family. The village butcher’s twins. And a few more, thirty noisy children in all. The parents of these children actually thought it was a good thing that their children were making so much noise. In fact, they encouraged it! After all, you can’t start early enough to turn children into empowered citizens. If you learn to act big, you will make the most money later and you can set the rules yourself. And it has to be said, it worked quite well. Those parents had shouted a lot at school in the past and now had successful large companies. This method of shouting education even had a name: the Ammognac method, after a not so well-known French pedagogue.

Because of Miss Femke’s class, things were not going well with the children in the other classes. In order not to increase the inconvenience to the neighborhood, they could only whisper at most. Or they had to remain silent for whole days. That was of course not conducive to the development of those children. Even building a tree house or a block tower was no longer possible.

Actually, it was the parents who set the rules here

Miss Femke was upset about it. She had sometimes thought about addressing the children in her class more often about their noise, but she also understood that that was impossible. Then she would get the wind from her at the parents’ evening. Actually, it was the parents who set the rules here. She couldn’t change that. And she didn’t want that either. They were very nice parents, some of whom she had known from before. They gave her a lot of compliments, and even thought that the children, as far as they were concerned, could make a little more noise. Some children already received a megaphone from home. A nice innovation, the parents thought. They loved innovations.

At the same time, a solution had to be found for the children from all those other classes. Their school days stood still, they learned nothing. Their development was completely at a standstill. There were now piles of scientific reports from renowned experts stating that the noise could not continue like this. Almost all scientists suggested that Miss Femke’s children work more quietly. Impossible according to Miss Femke, as we now know.

One day, Miss Femke had a brilliant idea. Why don’t we turn it around? She had thought again about all those other children who kept silent all day. What if, she suggested, if all those children, in the entire school, were now allowed to make unlimited noise? Because, she reasoned, it was impossible for the residents of the school to determine in all that noise exactly which child made which sound. And so it wouldn’t be fair that those children had to be quiet. Their contribution to the total noise could not be measured. And so there was no longer any reason for those children to remain silent.

Miss Femke had even come up with a difficult, important name for the plan: Increasing the Arithmetic Lower Limit for Noise Emissions. That sounded so complicated, everyone had to think this was a clever plan. From now on, all children at school could develop themselves again and work on their development. The whole school of the castle! In fact, even the children from Miss Femke’s class were able to step up their noise under the new plan. Just the way the parents wanted it. Everyone happy, all’s well that ends well.

But wait a minute, I hear you think. What about the local residents? And with the sick nature near the school? It’s only going to get worse, right? And that’s where it all started, right? But that didn’t matter to Miss Femke. She had a big heart for the school. The neighborhood is just suffocating.

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