Hacker News Reader

Comment by lukifer | Hacker News Reader

Here's a notion so crazy it could work: since we are clearly unwilling to pay what it takes to pay for classrooms smaller than 30, what if we instead had some classes with 20, and others with 40+? Any material which is pure lecture wouldn't lose much (see the college lecture halls of 100+), while other material gets more benefit from individual attention. It also allows teachers to specialize: Be an engaging public speaker, or focus on bonding with students and their unique learning styles.

It might only be feasible in schools without widespread behavior problems, but hey, it's a thought.

View on HN

Our children [snip] deserve to have a teacher who has time to read their work, to listen, to understand why they're crying or sleeping or not doing homework.

To teach each child in my classroom, I have to know each child in my classroom.

I wonder how much of what we think makes a great teacher just comes from "Stand and Deliver", or "Dangerous Minds". I always thrived more from the "lecture" style of teaching, which I got from very few teachers until I reached college. Maybe that's a personal affinity, but so must be the need for one-on-one interaction. Maybe the tasks at hand do have a lot to do with it.

Interesting idea though, lukifer. I'd be interested in what empirical studies show. I'm sure there is plenty, as biased as most might be in one way or the other.

Good point. I am skeptical that listening to why they are crying is a major contributor to a high quality education.

I'm just the opposite then. I gained little from the lectures. Most of my learning was done during office hours, with the TA, or in one of the labs/workshops. But, they are cheap to do and are don't show any problems so I assume lectures work for more people than not.

The idea that class size is a key leading to higher student success rate is a misnomer. Studies over the past 15 years have consistently indicated that class size has little (sometimes even converse) relation to student success rate.

http://www.npr.org/2011/03/29/134956184/school-founder-says-... , http://www.pioneerinstitute.org/pdf/010326_stergios.pdf

A lot of the top performing countries in education have extrodinarily high average class sizes. Taiwan has 44, South Korea has 49. http://www.arthurhu.com/index/classize.htm .

Although you aren't entirely off base, in Taiwan many math and science based classes can be 150 students or more, which I'm sure pulls the median.

Studies over the past 15 years have consistently indicated that class size has little (sometimes even converse) relation to student success rate.

Do any of those studies consider how class size affects the top or bottom 5% of students (as measured by academic potential rather than present academic achievement)? I suspect that those students at the ends of the bell curve would benefit more from reduced class sizes, but their needs are hidden in the statistics by the broad majority in the middle.

It's really strange how we are told by these articles that the reason to worry about all this is "competitiveness on the world market", yet the bottom 10% will never contribute anything to this and can be safely ignored completely. It's irrelevant what is done with them. What is important is how the top 1% are dealt with, and the stability of the society regarding the middle 90%.

Did you read the article? It addressed that. According to the author many students in these countries pay for additional instruction fromt tutors to make up for the lack of individual attention.

The problem isn't funding. We spend more per student than ever. The problem is that a lot of that money is being wasted on things like excessive administrative staff and whatnot.

What we need is a system with proper incentives toward actually improving the quality of education. The system has become so broken that we've tried to force it by relying too much on standardized tests, but that just makes the system worse.

Yeah, I recently read that a local district (Cobb country GA) spends 2x as much per student adjusted for inflation than they did 30 years ago. Yet graduation rates and test scores are about the same.

The problem is that a lot of that money is being wasted on things like excessive administrative staff and whatnot.

Do you have any citations for that? I'm not arguing with you, and my memories of high school make me think that you are correct, but I don't have any statistics to back it up. The only statistics I've seen indicate the opposite, but oddly enough they were provided by administrators.

There's this (from a google image search): http://atomictango.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/spending-p...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com