Smaller isn't better

On his radio talk-show, the liberal pundit intoned, "No thinking person would argue that smaller classrooms do not make for better learning."
Call me an unthinking person, then, because I will so argue. In the 1950s, at the height of the baby boom, it was not unusual to find an elementary school class of 40 or more children being successfully taught by one teacher.
My first-grade class picture, for example, shows 50 children. The adult-child ratio in my second- and third-grade classes was, respectively, 1 to 37 and 1 to 45.
In the course of my travels as a public speaker, I've met lots of men and women who contend to have taught, by themselves, 60, 70, 80, even 90 first-graders in the 1950s. To a person, they also contend to have had very few problems in the area of discipline. Either they are telling it like it was, or they are all suffering from mass memory muddle. I'll cast my vote for the former.
Though it's true that if one looks only at contemporary data, smaller classes seem to be associated, albeit inconsistently, with better performance -- historical and cross-cultural data suggests otherwise. As average class size has steadily diminished since the '50s, student achievement has rather steadily declined. At present, a significant gap exists between the achievement of kids in the '50s and kids today, in favor of the former.
Furthermore, students from countries where average class size is significantly greater than in the United States do consistently better on international tests of science and math. No thinking, informed person, therefore, could possibly argue that smaller classes lead to better learning. The only sensible conclusion to be drawn is that learning is not a matter of class size.
But if not class size, then what?
I will submit that the most important variable is the behavior of the children in the class. The better the behavior, the more effectively the teacher can teach, and the more children she can teach effectively.
History offersplenty of proof
Talk to any member of "The Greatest Generation" who taught school through the '50s, '60s, '70s, and maybe even '80s, and he or she will surely attest to the fact that as time went on, and classes became smaller and smaller, the behavior of children became more and more difficult.
This, for example, from a woman who taught 60 first-graders with no palpable problem in 1956: "Those kids came to school already disciplined. I did not have to do their parents' jobs. I did mine."
By contrast, a first-grade teacher in Mobile, Ala., recently told me that she was thinking of retiring early because of the 20 children in her class, "six came to me completely out of control, and nothing I've done has changed that." (The sad fact is a teacher can do little to nothing to change that which is exclusively the province of parents.)
So, if the fact that class size has almost nothing to do with student achievement is so obvious, why is the opposite of the obvious so ubiquitously held to be true?
The answer to that question lies in the answer to another: If not the children, then who, in the final analysis, profits most from small classes?
The National Education Association, that's who, for whom smaller classes means more teachers, and more teachers means more dues-paying members, and more members means more political clout in a country where, increasingly, political clout is everything.
The National Education Association is the source of this disingenuous "class" propaganda, as it is also the source of this equally spurious myth: More money means better education. Wrong again. The best nonelitist education in America is being provided by Catholic schools, where the per-pupil expenditure is roughly two-thirds of what it is in public education.
Compared to public schools, Catholic schools do a much better job with lower-class kids, and they do a slightly better job with upper-class kids. Consider also that the average teacher-pupil ratio in Catholic schools is significantly higher than the public school ratio (and Catholic school teachers are paid considerably less than public school teachers).
So the next time you hear someone remark that smaller classes and more money mean better education, dare to think, and then say, the unthinkable!
XJohn Rosemond is a family psychologist. Questions of general interest may be sent to him at Affirmative Parenting, 1020 East 86th Street, Suite 26B, Indianapolis, IN 46240 and at his Web site: http://www.rosemond.com/.