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.
“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.”
I teach college English, and we instructors often lament that some of our students are ill prepared for even the most basic English course. When I was growing up, everyone’s mortal fear, academically, was failing a grade. Passing students regardless of performance is a huge disservice. I have high school graduates in my courses who literally cannot compose a grammatically correct sentence. What have these kids been learning for twelve years? I remember sitting in junior high English diagramming sentences in a calm, orderly classroom—afraid of ticking off the teacher because I knew I’d be in bigger trouble at home if I did.