Effect of furniture on the postural deformity of school children

Abstract

The school years are said to be the formative years in our life and therefore, it is extremely important to take care of the child’s health and habit formation in these years. Nearly half of the working day of a child is spent in school, either in studying or interacting with his/her schoolmates/classmates, because of which school becomes his/her second home. Therefore, the classroom should be designed in such a manner that it does not impose physical and mental strain on the child. Because if the school furniture does not match to the physical features (height, weight etc.) of the students, there would be a high incidence of back discomfort and poor posture. School based surveys have shown a high prevalence of backache, particularly low back pain, ranging from 20-51% among children (Troussier, 1999). MSD/BP amongst school students is also of great concern because the strongest predictor of having future back pain is a previous history of such symptoms (Troup et al, 1987). In addition, a large proportion of adult sufferers report first onset of back pain in their early teenage years or early adult life (Papgeorgiou et al, 1996). Therefore, the present study was undertaken to find out the postural deformity among school children while using the ordinary table and chair present in their school. For the present study, a total 120 children studying in 4th, 6th and 10th standards, in the age group 6-10, 11-14 and 15-19 years, respectively, were selected from the campus school of Pantnagar. Research design used for the study were descriptive cum experimental. Purposive sampling was used and data was gathered by observation through the naked eye as well as through video recording. Subjects were allowed to work on ordinary as well as economically designed table and chair. The results showed that postural deformity was minimum while using economically design table and chair designed by Godrej as compared to the ordinary table and chair in school.