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Have to laugh at these recommendations. Recall 3rd grade, there were 86 of us in class. You could hear a pin drop, with each kid sitting with hands behind the back while the nun lectured. This class ratio was typical throughout all eight grades 1950-58. We also used fountain pens and I don't recall ever seeing a bottle of ink being knocked over.
High school, 1958-62, was a little different, maybe 50 kiddos per instructor, usually a Christian brother, sometimes a "lay" teacher.
I don't know about the government (public) schools at the time but expect that they were similar.
Glad that I'm old and lived through a better time before political-correctness infested the country.
Guessing you didn't have a classroom of students with nonverbal autism, seizure disorders, Down syndrome, and cerebral palsy, either.
I'm betting there were no SPED students of any kind. That was before IDEA and all the prior SPED laws. I have no idea how any young child could learn in that environment.
We must also remember the expectations for student academic achievement were much lower in the 50s.
I'm betting there were no SPED students of any kind. That was before IDEA and all the prior SPED laws. I have no idea how any young child could learn in that environment.
We must also remember the expectations for student academic achievement were much lower in the 50s.
I don't think so! We didn't have computers, or computer education (obvi), but everything else was pretty much the same as today, especially in elementary school. Granted, there's been more history since then (the 50s are now history) and many science advances, but general expectations were the same as near as I could tell when my kids were in HS in the late 90s/early 2000s.
Have to laugh at these recommendations. Recall 3rd grade, there were 86 of us in class. You could hear a pin drop, with each kid sitting with hands behind the back while the nun lectured. This class ratio was typical throughout all eight grades 1950-58. We also used fountain pens and I don't recall ever seeing a bottle of ink being knocked over.
High school, 1958-62, was a little different, maybe 50 kiddos per instructor, usually a Christian brother, sometimes a "lay" teacher.
I don't know about the government (public) schools at the time but expect that they were similar.
Glad that I'm old and lived through a better time before political-correctness infested the country.
Yes, but what did you learn in elementary other than to spit back what the nuns told you.
Our Catholic school had 60 in kindergarten and 65 in first grade which is one reason I was pulled out and went to the public school where the norm was 25 to 30 children in a class.
I went to school in the same time frame as you did and my experience was that our catholic elementary school did not teach math or science well. I actually started K at 4 because I wanted to and my dad said I could if the nuns would take me. He thought they would not, but they did. I was already reading and writing when I started and in first grade, it was frowned upon to be ahead in the Catholic school. Not so in the public school thank heavens.
Have there been studies to determine what the ideal class size should be? I've heard, e.g., that the smaller the class size, the better the results and I've heard it makes no difference. What can you add?
EdX
It depends on the students. If you give me students who will work and care about their grades, you can give me classes of 40 and I can do just fine but give me kids who don't want to learn, who don't work and do things like talk, disrupt the class and play on their phones all day and you'd better make that more like 12 so I can keep on top of them.
The problem with US education is our children are not held accountable or responsible for their own learning and they know it. They know the teacher will be blamed if they fail. Then we put 35 of them in the same room knowing that 15 are going to do everything they can to not learn and keep the class from learning. The teacher is so busy with the 15 that no one learns much and the ones who do usually learn it on their own because they care about grades (not learning but grades).
FTR I'd rather have classes of 40 where the kids want to learn than a class of 12 where they don't want to learn. What I get is a mix of kids who want to learn (or at least are motivated by their grades) and kids whose sole purpose in life is to see how little they can learn and how much trouble they can cause. With this kind of mix class size makes a HUGE difference. Smaller is better because there will be fewer disruptive kids/kids the teacher needs to focus on to get anyone to learn which means that everyone gets to learn more. I'd still take classes of kids who want to learn or are motivated to get good grades though. My job is much easier with those kids and I can teach them to high standards and they will follow.
I don't think so! We didn't have computers, or computer education (obvi), but everything else was pretty much the same as today, especially in elementary school. Granted, there's been more history since then (the 50s are now history) and many science advances, but general expectations were the same as near as I could tell when my kids were in HS in the late 90s/early 2000s.
No, the expectations for learning were not the same in the 1950s. My grandchildren who started school in the 2000s (2007 for dgd and 2010 for dgs) learned a great deal more than I did back in the 1950s. I managed to get away with reading my science fiction books while the teacher was lecturing back then. My grandchildren could not get away with that because they were doing real hands on projects and learned a lot more.
Have you actually been in an elementary school classroom today? They are not the same and the amount of learning going on is much improved.
No, the expectations for learning were not the same in the 1950s. My grandchildren who started school in the 2000s (2007 for dgd and 2010 for dgs) learned a great deal more than I did back in the 1950s. I managed to get away with reading my science fiction books while the teacher was lecturing back then. My grandchildren could not get away with that because they were doing real hands on projects and learned a lot more.
Have you actually been in an elementary school classroom today? They are not the same and the amount of learning going on is much improved.
It's Sunday, so no. I can be snarky too!
I was in an elementary school last week, helping with vision and hearing screening. Many of the kindergartners did not know their letters (and they only needed to know 4 for the kindergarten test); many of the first graders would have benefitted from the K test as well as they didn't seem real competent with the full alphabet. I wondered several times if some of these first graders couldn't see well enough to distinguish "O" from "C" or if they just weren't real fluent with the alphabet yet. I had a child in elementary school from 1989 to 1998. It seemed pretty much "the same but different" from when I was in ele school in the late 50s/early 60s.
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