Classroom learning in comparison is wasteful and ineffective
Attending 97,000 elementary and secondary public schools in the 50 states are some 50 million students with their 3.6 million teachers. Each student of the 50 million is unique and will learn in his or her own and unique manner. No two students, and certainly no two students in the same classroom, will learn in the same way.
Yet the schools, from this country’s beginnings in the 17th century, have always placed their students into whatever size classroom groups the particular circumstances permitted. And the circumstances have never allowed a one-on-one learning relationship, perhaps the only one that is truly effective.
Classroom learning in comparison is wasteful and ineffective. Witness the numbers of people who, when they want to learn something, and have the means, will go to a tutor, will find someone who knows the subject matter or skill and is willing and able to teach what he knows.
Schools have always been a compromise between how students learn and how teachers are able to teach or help them learn. Always a compromise because if we talk to Tom we know that Jerry may not be listening, and vice versa. Imagine what it’s like in a class with ten times that number, probably the average size classroom in the country’s 97,000 schools. How many are listening to the teacher at any given moment?
I still ask the question, did it have to be this way. Did students have to learn in a classroom with 20 of their no less ignorant peers? In any case, that’s now the way things are. If we’ve accepted the situation isn’t it because whether the students learn what we’re teaching them or not is not all that important. We’ve known for the longest time that what we teach them has little relevance to their daily lives.
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