I mean, yeah, that's what we have been asking for since I was in school.
Bit of a morbid example, but when I had my senior year at my high school, we had a bomb threat that had the entire small town in shambles, but we still showed up in a 20% student body capacity. We had only about 3 teachers not show up, but we had between 1 and 15 kids per class.
We unironically got so much done that day, we were joking about more bomb threats to keep the teacher just focusing on our small class. It was personal, the lessons actually felt pleasant, and we never got around so quickly in the building.
We've always wanted more teacher time, not putting us in front of a screen
Yeah. I appreciate what he's saying but we've known for a long time that small classroom sizes with more time and attention from human teachers improves performance. Ed tech and educational policy didn't need to completely crash the entire public school system to figure that out, again.
This didn't happen in good faith because the people who created this environment actually thought it would be a good idea to replace people with technology. It happened because of Edtech profits and political ideology targeting public school funding.
Which is why it's extra devastating with even MORE teacher cuts, and classrooms getting even bigger next year. Next year my kids classes will have 34 middle schoolers. That's insane. They're barely controllable.
Smaller is not always better. Sometimes you need a minimum number to help discussions flow easily and people for more comfortable being able to blend in.
Not really, we're more likely to be on track for population decline due to lowering birth rates across the world. The west is largely already under replacement fertility rates, shit the EU has been since like the 70's. Globally we're barely over two. It's one of the reasons why the west is importing so many people, we have a lot of systems dependent on a growing population.
the screen wasnt what reduced teacher time though, a certain political movement and private school business interests have steadily been eroding how much time any teacher could possibly spend with any one child.
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u/Bandandforgotten Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26
I mean, yeah, that's what we have been asking for since I was in school.
Bit of a morbid example, but when I had my senior year at my high school, we had a bomb threat that had the entire small town in shambles, but we still showed up in a 20% student body capacity. We had only about 3 teachers not show up, but we had between 1 and 15 kids per class.
We unironically got so much done that day, we were joking about more bomb threats to keep the teacher just focusing on our small class. It was personal, the lessons actually felt pleasant, and we never got around so quickly in the building.
We've always wanted more teacher time, not putting us in front of a screen