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You yourself stated that it's possible to have thirty students or more in a class without hitting some limit where teaching effectiveness decreases.
Let's flip your argument around... Why not have one on one tutoring of every student in school?
Because it would cost too much relative to the gain in performance. And because it would cost too much period.
I clearly framed the issue as if you do X such that performance metric Y does not decline.
We're discussing tradeoffs in a cost-benefit analysis, not strawmen.
Becuase I brought up one point.
Everything in life is not about "cost benefit analysis". But on that point, you have to look at long-term cost benefit analysis, as well as short-term cost benefit analysis. You seem to have missed the part where, after just one year of that teaching situation, I left that school system where I was teaching 240 students/day...and at a hefty personal cost since I had been teaching for 10 years but could only transfer 5 years of salary credit to the new school system. We already have a problem retaining teachers, and what you are suggesting would gut the ranks of teaches. But when it comes right down to it, that's exactly what you want. You are pretty clearly one of those people who want to destroy the public school system in favor of private schools. In 20 years as a school administrator, one of the most commmon questions asked of me by parents was, "What are your class sizes like?" I never had a single parent recommend that we increase class sizes. Never. Not once. But if class sizes got much above 25, I sure did get the complaints.
I notice you didn't respond to my comments about other client-size places of work -- why not use the same principle for the grocery store, the DMV, and such? How convenient.
But I'm going to relate an incident that you won't understand. There was always pressure on our middle school to have more student dances in the evening. We'd have one per quarter, but parents were always wanting more (which staff organized and chaperoned at no cost). One day our PTA insisted that they wanted to put on a school dance. "And Mr. Victor, you and your staff won't have to do a thing. We will take care of everything from beginning to end". I knew what was going to happen. So I had my staff ready, waiting in the faculty lounge, for the minute we would have to take over. It didn't take long. The rrefreshments had ordered ran out in less than 20 minutes. Wanna guess how students reacted to that? The kids HATED the disc jockey. More student unrest. "What do we do about the students who are up on the roof?" "What do we do about the smoking in the bathrooms?" "What do we do about the outsiders who gate crashed?" Ands on and on. In less than 45 minutes all the mothers who were running the dance had left in tears. And then us veterans took back over and got things taken care of and under control. Any fool who thinks class size doesn't matter doesn't understand what's it's like to work with 800 - 3,000 students in a school.
I was an administrator in the nation's eleventh largest school system -- over 175,000 students. One year, in mid-August they had the annual meeting of school administrators. All the principals, vice-principals, guidance directors, etc. And they invited back all the living former superintendents, who agreed to participate in a question/asnwer session. And one of the most pointed questions for each of them was: "What was your biggest success and your biggest failure as a superintendent?" To this day I only remember one of the answers from one of the old superintedents (paraphrased, of course): 'My biggest mistake was pushing and convincing the Board Of Education to move away from smaller high schools to larger high schools. We had a great motive -- in larger high schools we could offer specialized electives that we couldn't in a small high school, where class size wouldn't make some of those electives economically feasible. Worst decision I ever made, and the school system has suffered from that ever since".
Ideas like yours generally come from the people who want to destroy the public education system. The people who want all schools to be private schools. Who do not want -- and in fact are (im)morally opposed to -- our education system being the great leveler of poverty and culture. They'd love to go back to school integration by not only race, but by economics, as well. OR, they're just plain dumb.
As a teacher, I think there is a sweet spot for class size. A class too small isn't dynamic enough for best learning - I remember one year I had a class with 11 students and it was as hard as my class of 39. Anything from 20-35 or so all felt about the same, but it was harder to get to know my students well and give them individual attention when it was 35 students, and it was more stressful in terms of the volume of grading and people to manage, bodies filling the space to the point of feeling really crowded, etc., - not having enough desks and what not. I wonder if our classrooms were designed to accommodate larger groups if that would help - I really think it would. The facilities can be as big an issue as anything. But when the volume of things got too high, it becomes harder to give good attention to detail and to one assignment or student in particular. You have less energy for creative thinking when it comes to lesson planning and so on.
I had that same thing happen to me one year. All of my classes had around 25 kids, except somehow in one class I only ended up with 12 kids. I thought it was going to be wonderful. It was a disaster. We'd do a science lab, and then, because of the particular mix of kids in that class, I couldn't get a classroom discussion going. 20-28 kids seemed to me to be the sweet spot.
The bright, motivated student (and I believe the vast majority fit this mold) will have more opportunities to identify his/her strengths and interests -- and find his/her own way in an open, less-regimented environment.
The disruptive few simply need to be identified, isolated, and the skids greased into a strictly-regimented system; some will redeem themselves via another path -- the military, for example, or a demanding, sometimes-hazardous physical job/role, but most of the "hard cases" I remember from my wasted junior-high days are dead -- often the fruit of their own stupidity.
This is the way that nature and the markets have been sorting things out for centuries, and the dreams of the bureaucratic empire-builders of the sham called public education to the contrary, the way the process will continue.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 09-03-2023 at 08:57 AM..
I had that same thing happen to me one year. All of my classes had around 25 kids, except somehow in one class I only ended up with 12 kids. I thought it was going to be wonderful. It was a disaster. We'd do a science lab, and then, because of the particular mix of kids in that class, I couldn't get a classroom discussion going. 20-28 kids seemed to me to be the sweet spot.
Yeah, too small is as bad as too big but for different reasons. My ideal number was usually around 28 (rare as that was) but it depended on the class, electives were typically easier to manage/teach with a higher number because, until my last couple or four years, they contained kids who wanted to be there. The last few years we had so many 5th and 6th year Seniors that they'd be parachuted into any class with an empty seat. Those kids weren't 5th and 6th year Seniors because they were academic all-stars or positive behavioral role models.
One year I had two AP Psych classes that were somewhat of a disaster scene. There were 79 kids signed up so instead of 3 classes of 25+/- (which is the College Board standard number for that particular AP) there were 40 in each class (or rather 40 and 39).
Those were too big for the class, even if the kids were some of the top kids. Mostly because of what I mentioned earlier, I started to lose track of who needed help at that number and because a lot of the kids couldn't stand each other. That meant developing groups for some of the labs/projects was problematic.
Added to that were the two girls who ended up as Co-Valedictorians. They had been in competition literally since Kindergarten and one of them took the Psych class just because the other one (who's now a Doctoral candidate in Psych) did so she could stay even in the GPA race. They got along all right but there was some tension.
The bright, motivated student (and I believe the vast majority fit this mold) will have more opportunities to identify his/her strengths and interests -- and find his/her own way in an open, less-regimented environment.
The disruptive few simply need to be identified, isolated, and the skids greased into a strictly-regimented system; some will redeem themselves via another path -- the military, for example, or a demanding, sometimes-hazardous physical job/role, but most of the "hard cases" I remember from my wasted junior-high days are dead -- often the fruit of their own stupidity.
This is the way that nature and the markets have been sorting things out for centuries, and the dreams of the bureaucratic empire-builders of the sham called public education to the contrary, the way the process will continue.
Uh huh...and for centuries we had such a just system.
The disruptive few simply need to be identified, isolated, and the skids greased into a strictly-regimented system; some will redeem themselves via another path -- the military, for example, or a demanding, sometimes-hazardous physical job/role, but most of the "hard cases" I remember from my wasted junior-high days are dead -- often the fruit of their own stupidity.
Not that I disagree in principle ... but the core questions and the brer rabbit tarbaby remain:
A) HOW to separate from and B) where they'll go (rather more exactly too)
eta.... and C) That neither social work effort have ANYTHING to do with the schools themselves.
Quote:
Originally Posted by phetaroi
Uh huh...and for centuries we had such a just system.
Correct. We did. And what that evolved to by the 20th Century would continue to mostly work well.
Then we outgrew it and (rather critically) the no/low skill Industrial Jobs which built that world evaporated.
Last edited by MrRational; 09-03-2023 at 09:24 AM..
Not that I disagree in principle ... but the core questions and the brer rabbit tarbaby remain:
A) HOW to separate from and B) where they'll go (rather more exactly too)
eta.... and C) That neither social work effort have ANYTHING to do with the schools themselves.
Correct. We did. And what that evolved to by the 20th Century would continue to mostly work well.
Then we outgrew it and (rather critically) the no/low skill Industrial Jobs which built that world evaporated.
When you have to go to the DMV, why not just have 1 clerk instead of 8?
One grocery checkout instead of 5?
One gas pump instead of 10?
One nurse in the emergency room.
Let's cut those prices!
Are you not able to see that what you’ve described isn’t remotely similar to student/teacher ratios?
What I am able to see is the same philosophy that I heard when our school system decided to finally put air conditioning in the schools:
'I need an air-conditioned work place because I'm an adult. But schools don't need to be air conditioned cause they're just kids'.
Not only were your original analogies that I pointed out completely flawed, but this response of yours isn’t at all related to my point, nor your own flawed analogies.
Since you seem confused, I’ll help you out.
A teacher can effectively teach multiple kids at once (you pointed out that 20-28 was the sweet spot). However, a DMV worker can only process one client at a time. And as for the rest of your examples? Can a grocery store clerk check out one person at a time, or multiple people at once? Can multiple people use the same gas pump at the same time? Can a nurse attend to multiple patients at the same time?
Sorry phetaroi, but this was a massive fail on your part.
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