You know, MC, I fully agree with you. The behemoth Dept. of Ed. was one of the worst things to ever happen to this country. Small neighborhood schools are best if we HAVE to have public education. And before THAT, the one-room schools produced some of the finest citizens this country has ever had. Home schooling is superior to all, of course. I get so tired of seeing young skulls full of mush warehoused together. All they end up doing is pooling their ignorance. And that’s just the teachers! Never mind the students! :-)
Now they say that any more than 20 kids in elementary school is far too many to teach. Our baby boomer classes often had 36 kids, and nobody would have dared misbehave or be disrespectful to the teacher. I’ve seen tapes from classrooms where there was no teaching whatsoever, just pure chaos with kids roaming around, using foul language at the teacher and each other. And worse than I care to describe here.
How did our teachers manage with so many kids? The parents were on board, the school district backed the teachers if discipline would have come up. Oh, and all the kids shared American values and language, and we even got let out for religious training of our choice once a week for an hour or so.