Journal d'ergonomie
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Evaluation of Different Sitting Postures of Rural Primary School Boys in the Classroom

Subrata Dutta and Prakash C Dhara

The pupils are involved in reading and writing for a long duration (4-5 hrs) during attending the school. In many of the rural primary schools in India, students are not provided with bench and desk and they used to sit on the floor during attending the class. The present study was aimed to evaluate different postures adopted in the classroom. The posture selected for this study were sitting on the bench, sitting on the floor by folded legs (Indian traditional posture), and sitting on the floor with stretched legs. The study was carried on ten rural primary school children (n=106) between the age groups 6 to 10 years. The musculoskeletal disorders, EMG (Electromyography) of back and shoulder muscles, whole body center of gravity (CG), body joint angles, and base contact area of the student were recorded. During sitting on the bench, the back region was much more affected than sitting on the floor with folded knees. The location CG during sitting on the floor was shifted to the base from the reference position. The study of body joint angle revealed that the neck, shoulder and elbow angles had lesser deviation from that of reference posture during sitting on the floor than that in sitting on the bench. It was also observed that the EMG voltages during sitting on the floor had significantly lower values (p