Quote:
Originally Posted by Sliver
My contention is class sizes are not a problem. I was in a class with 35 at one point in my schooling, but 30 - 32 was a regular thing. The sizes are fine. That's the job. You get a class of 30ish kids.
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That isn’t the job in every school though. That’s the point you’re missing. Some schools have class sizes of around 15 students and some have well over 30. I doubt you‘d argue that students in a class of 15 wouldn’t have any possible advantage over students in a class of 30. (Actually maybe I should change that to “I doubt most people would argue” given your posting history, even though I’m generally a fan of your posts)
And just because you were able to succeed in that setting doesn’t mean everyone can. You’re also overlooking other factors such as learning/behavioural and language barriers. My kids went to the same school and my youngest despite being brilliant and very good at school work had a very hard time for the first few years because frankly the majority of her class was out of control. When we moved and they changed schools her grades shot up through the roof while her sister’s stayed about the same because her class at the old school wasn’t problematic. It’s an anecdotal example for sure but I doubt it’s an unlikely or uncommon scenario.
While it’s impossible to predict which classes will have more challenging students, you can mitigate the effects they’ll have on the other students by having smaller class sizes. Compare a class of 30 with 15 challenging students to a class of 20 with 15 challenging students. The teacher will still have to deal with the same number of challenging student but they will have much more time leftover to spend with each of the other students.
In a perfect world where every kid in a class of 30 has parents who take an active roll in their education, have the time(and more importantly the ability) to help them with their homework every night, every student speaks perfect English and none have ADHD or any other issues that may require them to need additional support I’d be inclined to agree with you that class sizes aren’t an issue. But unfortunately we don’t live in a perfect world.