"Conventional wisdom deems smaller classes superior. Mr. Boyer, a self-described 'Podunk instructor,' calls that 'poppycock.'"
In the West and in the East, there has always been wisdom contrary to the conventional wisdom that small class sizes are always better. Indeed, the Roman author Quintilian, writing about rhetoric, derided teachers who insisted on small class sizes. In Quintilian's view, the true test of a teacher was being able to engage and enlighten a large class. Quintilian described teachers who could only handle small class sizes as no better than baby-sitting slaves. He wrote, "all good teachers like a large class and think they deserve a bigger stage" while it is the "weaker teachers, conscious of their own defects, who cling to individual pupils and seem content" (Book I of his Institutio Oratoria).
have characteristically large class sizes, the better to ensure that teachers are more stringently selected and that they have work hours during the school day to confer with master teachers of their subject. More details of how schools are organized in some of the conspicuously successful countries can be found in
In the West and in the East, there has always been wisdom contrary to the conventional wisdom that small class sizes are always better. Indeed, the Roman author Quintilian, writing about rhetoric, derided teachers who insisted on small class sizes. In Quintilian's view, the true test of a teacher was being able to engage and enlighten a large class. Quintilian described teachers who could only handle small class sizes as no better than baby-sitting slaves. He wrote, "all good teachers like a large class and think they deserve a bigger stage" while it is the "weaker teachers, conscious of their own defects, who cling to individual pupils and seem content" (Book I of his Institutio Oratoria).
http://www.newfoundations.com/GALLERY/Quintilian.html
East Asian schools, which are still plainly superior to those of the United States in the view of informed observers,
http://educationnext.org/the-common-core-math-standards/
have characteristically large class sizes, the better to ensure that teachers are more stringently selected and that they have work hours during the school day to confer with master teachers of their subject. More details of how schools are organized in some of the conspicuously successful countries can be found in
http://www.amazon.com/The-Teaching-Gap-Improving-Education/d...
and
http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematic...