https://twitter.com/CleighMoores/status/381924304796909568

https://twitter.com/CleighMoores/status/381924903185682432

I laughed at first when I made this correlation, but I suddenly found it a little disturbing. It came to me when I walked past the primary school I walk past every day to and from the train station. The recess/lunchtime bells were probably put in place to indicate the time of day put aside for eating your daily sustenance and getting some exercise, but the subsequent psychology behind it seems a bit off to me. What it mimics is a classical conditioning experiment (see Pavlov’s Dog) that conditions us as schoolchildren to expect food at the sound of a bell. It creates routine, something young minds can easily grasp, yet I still find the idea strange because it’s the same bell sound throughout primary school and high school (years Prep & One through Twleve), at least it was for me.

The same goes for the start and end of the day bell. It makes me wonder what difference it would make if there were no omnipotent bells and the teachers would simply call class to an end and dismiss the children themselves. There would definitely be a more personal touch to it, and the students wouldn’t expect to have their daily routine dictated by an inanimate sound. We don’t have bells in offices or workplaces to indicate lunch times, however we do have them in prisons and military installations (to my knowledge). Perhaps this should be amended, this tradition from an era past. The school bell sounds awful too.