At the summer fireworks in our town, everybody rides to the fireworks in the back of somebody’s pickup. Too many children in the bed, knees in each other’s backs, a cooler sliding around on every turn. Nobody gets the good spot. Everybody gets there. I have never once heard a child in that truck bed complain, and I have never seen a happier bunch. I think of those rides when I hear people fretting about class sizes.
Teachers I know say their classrooms are too full. Nobody has shown me figures, and I have not asked for any. But I believe it, because I hear it from teachers I know and I see it when I visit. More desks than the rooms were built for. A teacher who cannot get to every child in a day, or in some weeks. I want to say something unpopular about this. I think it is good for them.
A child in a small class gets attention. A child in a crowded class gets independence. In the small class, the teacher notices when you fall behind and comes to your desk. In the crowded class, nobody comes, and so you learn to catch up on your own, or you learn to live with being behind. Both of those are lessons the world will teach him eventually. A crowded classroom only teaches them sooner.
There is also the matter of who pays. I am a homeowner, and my property tax bill is where I feel the cost of every school in the county. I would rather not pay more. Smaller classes mean more teachers, more rooms, more buildings, and every bit of that comes out of a house like mine. I have looked at that trade honestly. A little crowding is good for children, and a smaller tax bill is good for me, and I do not see why both cannot be true at once.
The quiet children do especially well in a crowded room. They learn early that the loud ones will get the teacher’s time, and they make their peace with it. They become self-reliant. They stop raising their hands. Some of them, I am told, go quiet for good. I think a quiet child is a gift to a busy teacher. The ones with real grit rise to the top of a crowded room like cream.
Critics will say I am describing children falling through the cracks. I would say I am describing children learning that there are cracks, which is one of the most useful things a person can know. Nobody ever learned to keep his footing on a floor without them.
I will vote for my party’s man for the Senate this fall with those rooms in mind. The other fellow, as I understand him, would like to thin them out, and I would rather leave them as full as they are.
When I was in school I sat near the back and nobody called on me much. I was not noticed, particularly, by anyone.
I have always believed it made me who I am.
D. M.