Monday, 7:45 a.m. Outside a private school in Addis Ababa, a sleek 4×4 glides to a stop. A few cars back, a weathered blue sedan inch forward. On the sidewalk, a grandmother threads a first-grader past idling engines. A minibus eases to the curb; two children hop down. However, they arrive, the same thing happens next: the street’s roar follows them through the gate, slips through thin windows, and bounces around hard-surfaced rooms. Later, at recess, the source changes: a loudspeaker blares music—about 72 dB, busy-street loud—well-meant “entertainment” that adds to the din. From the stressful journey to the classroom and even the playground, our children are immersed in a cacophony that sets the terms of their learning.
We carefully monitor our children’s food and screen time, yet overlook an invisible pollutant: noise. Evidence consistently links chronic exposure to weaker attention, slower reading, and higher stress. In Addis Ababa, the street doesn’t stop at the gate; it enters the classroom. It reaches the child who walks, rides a minibus, or steps out of a private car—and in many schools, road-facing rooms sit directly on major corridors, the acoustic front line. The gap between what is and what should be is stark: classrooms should be about 35 dB LAeq (library-quiet), yet many operate near 70–80 dB LAeq (busy-street loud). Because a +10 dB change sounds roughly twice as loud, this isn’t minor. What is this constant din doing to a child’s ability to think, learn, and feel safe in class—and how can we turn it down?
Why Noise Hurts Learning: The Invisible Classroom Tax
It begins with a single moment. A teacher gives a two-step instruction; a sudden truck horn blasts through the sentence. Instantly, a child’s brain is forced to do two jobs at once: process the lesson and fight off the sound. This cognitive split is the heart of the problem. Here is how it plays out.
The Brain Drain: A child learns best when the teacher’s voice is the clearest sound in the room. But traffic noise hijacks this channel. The brain becomes a bouncer, constantly working to suppress the rumble of engines and the jarring peaks of horns. This thankless task drains the mental energy needed to hold instructions, follow a story, or stick with a difficult problem. It’s the reason you hear, “What page are we on?” after every interruption—the thread of thought has been severed.
The Reading Barrier: Learning to read is a delicate auditory skill. It depends on a child’s ability to catch tiny sound differences—the “b” from the “p,” the “sh” from the “ch.” When noise masks the teacher’s voice, those crucial cues are lost. Children fall behind in phonics, then read more slowly. In road-facing classrooms, teachers spend their time repeating and simplifying, rather than building richer skills. Progress stalls, not for a lack of effort, but because the acoustics are working against them.
The Stress Alarm: Unpredictable noise—a honk, a sharp brake, a whistle—is treated by the body as a potential threat. The heart rate ticks up. Stress hormones like cortisol rise. In this physiological state, designed for quick reaction, the subtle work of focusing and forming memories becomes far harder. In class, this looks like irritability, restless movement, and “short fuses.” The classroom environment itself becomes a source of low-grade anxiety.
The Long-Term Shadow: The damage compounds. Over months and years, population studies link chronic noise exposure to more symptoms of inattention, behavioral difficulties, and a higher likelihood of anxiety. The effects on any single day may seem small, but like a steady drip, they can fill a bucket. Small daily losses accumulate into significant gaps in learning and well-being.
A Physical Toll on Health: We cannot compartmentalize a child’s life. The stress of noise at school doesn’t vanish at the school gate. Long-term exposure to transportation noise is clearly linked to higher blood pressure in adults, and emerging research shows worrying signals in youth. The sound entering the classroom isn’t just a distraction; it is a persistent physiological stressor.
The Teacher’s Burden: And finally, the adults pay a price. Teachers are on the acoustic front lines. Projecting over traffic strains their voices, saps their energy, and chops their lessons into fragments. Precious minutes of instruction vanish into repetition. The constant battle leaves them with vocal fatigue and professional burnout, undermining their ability to provide the quality of education they strive to deliver.
The Bottom Line: Noise obscures speech, taxes the brain, and keeps the body on alert. It is an invisible tax levied on every lesson, every day, eroding the foundation of education. By understanding this toll, the case for action becomes undeniable.
So what does that sound like inside Addis classrooms—on real mornings, in real rooms?
Addis-Specific Exposure: How the City’s Pulse Disrupts the Classroom
In Addis Ababa, the geography of learning often follows the geography of traffic. Rapid motorization and the siting of many schools on major arteries mean road noise isn’t a moment at the gate—it’s the backdrop to lessons. Along corridors like Megenagna–Sidist Kilo and Gotera–Kality, the unrelenting flow of heavy trucks and minibuses, punctuated by frequent honking, keeps exterior levels high from the first bell to the last.
To see what that means indoors, we ran a simple spot check during the morning peak. In three road-facing classrooms during the morning peak, a 10-minute LAeq reading dropped by 5–6 dB when windows were latched—78→72, 74→69, 81→75—yet ‘closed’ levels still sat ~34–40 dB above the 35 dB LAeq classroom guideline. In other words, sealing helps, but the street still wins.
The Building as an Amplifier: The problem doesn’t stop at the school wall; the buildings themselves often make it worse. Classrooms are typically equipped with single-pane, loosely sealed windows, often opened for essential ventilation, which act as an open door for sound. Once inside, the noise bounces off hard, reflective surfaces—plaster walls, concrete floors, and bare ceilings—creating a reverberating echo chamber that further muddles the teacher’s voice. Even when windows are closed, poor seals and leaky façades offer little defense, dropping the level by only a few decibels.
A Culture of Sound Spikes: Beyond the steady roar, Addis Ababa’s distinctive “horn culture” adds a uniquely disruptive element. Horns used to signal presence or impatience produce sharp, unpredictable bursts that are exceptionally effective at shattering a child’s concentration, particularly during critical early reading lessons.
Compounding the Problem from Within: At times, the school environment itself adds a second layer of noise. On some campuses, loudspeakers blaring music during recess can push playground levels to 70–75 dB—as loud as a busy street. This well-intentioned “entertainment” creates a state of high arousal that children carry back with them into the classroom, while the residual sound seeps through windows facing the yard, prolonging the acoustic assault.
An Unequal Burden: The burden of this pollution is not distributed equally. Schools nestled along market streets and busy bus terminals—which often serve communities with fewer resources for acoustic upgrades—face the most intense and complex noise loads. This places an environmental disadvantage directly on top of existing educational challenges, widening the opportunity gap.
This combination of urban layout, building design, and cultural factors creates a perfect storm, turning many of our schools into front-line battles for attention.
Voices from the Classroom
Most of us—teachers and parents alike—treat traffic noise as the price of city life. We notice shouting and horns, but not the learning cost. In conversations for this piece, few parents or teachers linked classroom strain or after-school fatigue to road noise; they blamed “screen time,” “sugar,” “sleep,” or “attention spans today.”
“I didn’t connect it to the road,” says Alemnesh, a teacher from a primary school in Addis Ababa. “I repeat instructions three or four times. By lunch my throat is raw. I thought it was just big classes. On quieter days after a holiday, lessons move faster.”
Parents often see the spillover without the cause. “My son comes home exhausted,” says Selamawit Teklu, mother of a third-grader. “We cut screens and changed bedtime. It didn’t help. On heavy-traffic days he’s most frustrated. I never thought the noise itself was the problem.”
A school guard adds the curbside view: “Drop-off is the loudest time. Engines idling, horns, whistles—everyone is rushing. Inside, teachers start the day already raising their voices.”
These ordinary observations point to a simple truth: when noise is constant, we normalize it and misattribute its effects. Naming the pattern is the first step.
The Evidence—and the Silence
We don’t have to imagine consequences; the early warnings exist. While Addis-specific studies on traffic noise and learning are missing, research from many cities shows chronic exposure impairs attention, slows reading progress, and raises stress in children. That is the global backdrop to what our teachers and parents describe.
Within Ethiopia, some regional studies report notable rates of hearing problems in school-aged children. While these findings often reflect other health factors, they underscore a critical point: many children begin their education with listening challenges. Pouring the constant roar of traffic makes a hard task nearly impossible.
The more telling fact is what we haven’t measured here. No local study has tracked the daily roar outside Addis schools against reading scores, attention, or stress inside them. That absence isn’t proof the problem is small; it shows a major barrier to learning has gone uncounted. We have strong global evidence and clear local signals. The question is whether we will wait for a perfect study—or listen to what classrooms are already telling us and move to the fixes that are well within reach. The good news is that the path to quieter classrooms is clear and can start immediately.
The Way Forward: A Quieter Future is Within Reach
The constant noise feels inevitable, but it doesn’t have to be. The solutions are not mysterious; they require awareness and a shared commitment to act. The path to quieter classrooms involves everyone—from parents and teachers to city planners.
What We Can Do Right Now: Change can begin this semester, without large budgets. Schools can make simple, strategic shifts: moving younger children’s classrooms away from the road, keeping windows closed during the noisiest morning hours, and using inexpensive portable microphones so teachers don’t have to strain their voices. Hanging curtains and rugs can absorb the echo, making it easier to hear. These are first steps that cost little but pay back immediately in calmer, more focused lessons.
What Communities Can Champion: The next layer of defense happens at the school gate and in our neighborhoods. Parent-Teacher Associations and local administrators can champion the planting of dense, fast-growing trees and hedges to form a natural sound barrier. They can also be the loudest voices demanding that the city establish “Quiet School Zones”—areas near schools where unnecessary horn-honking is banned and traffic calming measures, like speed bumps, are installed.
What the City Must Do: Lasting change requires City Hall to lead. The most critical steps include updating building codes to ensure new schools are built with soundproofing in mind, and investing in the retrofit of existing schools with better windows and insulation. This is not just a maintenance issue; it is a vital investment in our children’s cognitive health and academic future. The city’s transport and police departments must also be partners, turning “Quiet School Zones” from an idea into an enforced reality.
How We Will Know It Is Working: The proof will be in the numbers. Once a term, take a 10-minute LAeq reading during morning peak at student-ear height in one road-facing classroom and post the number on the noticeboard. Track a handful of schools per sub-city and publish term totals. Aim for ≤55 dB LAeq in the near term and work toward ≤35 dB LAeq as rooms are upgraded. If numbers don’t fall, the responsible office should explain—and adjust.
The sound of a thriving city and the sound of effective learning do not have to be at odds. By taking these coordinated steps, we can ensure that the dominant sound in our classrooms is not the roar of traffic, but the sound of children learning.
Measure it, post it, reduce it—so the classroom finally beats the street.
Tsegaye Nega (PhD) is a Professor Emeritus at Carleton College in the United States and the Founder and CEO of Anega Energies Manufacturing.
Contributed by Tsegaye Nega (PhD)
