Classroom Idiocracy: The Absurdity of Overstuffed Learning Environments

Classroom Idiocracy: The Absurdity of Overstuffed Learning Environments

In the finely tuned machinery of the US armed forces, there exists a sensible formula for unit sizes. A sergeant commands around five soldiers. A staff sergeant oversees a squad of nine or ten. The logic is straightforward: a manageable number of individuals can be led, mentored, and monitored. Yet walk into nearly any American classroom and one finds a bizarre disconnect. Students crammed in by the dozens, with a single teacher frantically racing about in a futile effort to serve their needs. It is the educational equivalent of crowd control, rather than leadership.

Why do we trust a sergeant to mentor five soldiers, yet expect teachers to seriously educate six times that number-or worse-all on their own? The inconsistency approaches the absurd. Most classrooms in this country contain a throng of twenty to thirty students or more. Few instructors could be expected to truly reach, motivate, and challenge each individual in a group so large. Even with the aid of a teacher's aide, the numbers defy reason. It is little wonder that student performance languishes when teachers are asked to work miracles under these conditions.

Of course, the bureaucratic machinery will claim "budget concerns" require such swollen class populations. More teachers and classrooms, they will argue,strain budgets and balloon costs. But I dare say children's educational needs should take precedent over the penny-pinching of administrators. For far less than the waste and fraud so rampant in military budgets, we could easily align student-to-teacher ratios with those used to train our armed forces. If we trust sergeants and staff sergeants to mentor small squads effectively, why not follow suit in our schoolrooms?

Action is needed now to remedy this long neglected issue. Parents and educators must demand class sizes be slashed to reasonable proportions. Students are not widgets to be crammed into rooms like sardines. They are the future. And that future seems grim if the current overstuffed class model persists. Our children deserve an education tailored to their individual potential. But with today's classroom crowds that is impossible. We are doing generation after generation a great disservice. For the sake of our nation's youth, class sizes must be reduced substantially. The excuses no longer hold water. Only then can the promise of a proper education be fulfilled for all.