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Re: Class size (Re: Getting students to take responsibility)
Posted:
Oct 10, 1995 5:54 PM
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In a message dated 95-10-10 07:11:33 EDT, tad@midget.towson.edu (Tad
Watanabe) writes:
>I don't think class size is really the issue. Japanese high schools (and
>elementary schools, too) usually have rather large number of students.
>When I was in high school in Japan, there were 45 students in most of the
>classes. About 5 years ago, when I visited the school to observe math
>lessons, one class had 50 or more students in the room. And, I'm sure
>there are many excellent math classes in the US with 40 or more students
>in the room. The real issue seems is to identify what it is that makes
>those teachers to teach so effectively in that circumstance. Discussing
>classroom size in vacuum seems to be a fruitless endeavor, IMHO.
Tad,
I don't think it's the teachers, it's the students. The Japanese culture is
very homogeneous and VERY ambitious. I'm sure there are fewer discipline
problems in a Japanese class of 50 than in a typical U.S. class of 25. In
Utah they spend very little money on education, have large classes, but get
good results for the same reasons as the Japanese (let's hear from the
teachers in Utah). There are really only three aspects to having a good
educational system:
1) the parents 2) the parents 3) the parents
Do you know any teacher who wouldn't burn their copy of the Standards to have
a class full of kids who each had two caring and parents interested in their
education?
Kent
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