Does class size really matter?

[Persia]

Parents are dying to get their kids into smaller classes. But research shows they may be panicking over nothing ...

http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/08/06/good_school_excerpt/index.html

[Mr.United_Nations]

Actualy it does matter, smaller classes means that you work better, get more help and be able to construct a better teamwork and leadership. I should know because i was in a small class this year.

[dalia]

Parents are dying to get their kids into smaller classes. But research shows they may be panicking over nothing ...

http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/08/06/good_school_excerpt/index.html

Class size does matter, but so does teacher competancy and subject matter being taught.

[jugoso]

I would have to say that it absolutely matters. many of the high schools here have up to 50 students in a class. It´s pretty hard to give any type of personal attention. In such a situation, the "good" students are usually the ones that get the attention. The "difficult" students (who are usually the cool ones ) can easily "hide" behind others and not get the attention they deserve. As a teacher, it´s pretty hard to learn 50 students names, let alone figure out a way to erach them.

[me-wonders]

Parents are dying to get their kids into smaller classes. But research shows they may be panicking over nothing ...

http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/08/06/good_school_excerpt/index.html

Why do you ask?

We could ask, is a completely impersonal education equal to one where the students enjoy a personal relationship with the teacher? Are we programming children like computers, or interacting with them as human beings? Does a human child need to learn more than reading, writing and math? Does a teacher do more than program children's brain? What motivates children to learn?

Perhaps we could eliminate the teacher completely, and just force children to sit in chairs while viewing a large screen TV. Every 5 th grader in the nation could have identical, government approved educations, using only one teacher to do the recorded lesson. A room monitor could pass out work sheets and test, for a lot less than we pay teachers. Equip the rooms with video cameras to oversee the children, so with efficiency disruptive or non attentive students can be removed from the room, for discipline. This would increase equality, and reduce the problem of teacher favoritism. We could save enough money to pay for Medicare or buy more million dollar bombs. Is that the bottom line?

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

Look at it like this - given the amount of teaching that is mandated to be done in a day, there's only a small amount of time that can actually be left to interactions between teacher and student in order to gauge how they're going emotionally and educationally. The less kids, the more time per kid can be allocated to this.

[bLu3 de 3n3rgy]

When i was at school i wish teachers would just throw anyone who was disruptive out so the rest of us could have a chance of concentrating. I have thought about it both ways and can see and have experienced in smaller groups how, certain individuals can still be complete attention whores even in a small group and dominate the dynamics of that group into utter nonsense, and the teacher still spends the entire time giving their energy and time to the wrong ones.

Edited August 16, 2011 by AnVil

[8th_wall]

I would say what's more important is the total number of students the teacher teaches. Including the teacher's own personal friends/colleagues/w.e then this number should not be exceeding... About 100? Read something on here or elsewhere that the human being is only equipped to maintain ~150 social relationships and therefore being able to hold knowledge of a student's progress can become rather difficult when over this number.