Internet research is funny because you often have to sift through a discourse with similar key words that’s not what you’re looking for, a discourse often much more frequently used. This imbalance can often have an ironic twist.
For example, when I was researching the importance for kids of “adult attention” for my book, I had to sift through a mountain of articles about adult attention deficit disorder. I liked the irony so much that I named one of the chapters “Adult Attention Deficit” as a punny way to highlight how there is a deficit of adults paying attention to kids in schools. The reason the irony works so well is that AAD as a psychological idea is focused entirely on adults being able to pay attention to things for their own benefit. Thus, an overwhelming majority of the time the words “adult attention” are used, they portray adults as in need rather than kids as in need of adults.
Part of the idea of this blog was to make available on the web some running commentary on class size issues in the news that didn’t just reduce the issue back down to test scores. That has meant sifting through keyword searches that reveal a similar ironic trend: a much used discourse in advertising education to adults that urges them to hurry and sign up because “class size is limited” or assures them the class will be effective because “class size will be limited to” some number (vastly smaller than public K-12 classes).
This recent article from North Carolina, for example, lets the reader know about a required course for all teachers and substitutes in the state. “Class size is limited. Early registration is suggested” (”Required teacher course offered at UNCA,” Asheville Citizen-Times, August 31, 2009). Will the classes those teachers teach be limited in size?
That’s not actually a rhetorical question. Another recent article from North Carolina claims the state recently removed class size limits in grades 4 to 12, but I haven’t yet found any confirmation of the removal or the prior limits.
The state has taken away class size limits for grades four through 12, allowing districts to put as many students in each classroom as necessary to deal with drastically reduced school funding.
Henderson County school officials say they will have more students in each classroom, but will hopefully not exceed the previous class size limits.
The previous limits were a maximum of 29 students per class in grades four through nine and 32 students for grades 10 through 12.
(”State removes class size limits.” Jennifer Heaslip. Hendersonville Times-News, August 25, 2009)
Whatever the case in NC may be, most states have no class size limits whatsoever, and those that do have only K-3 limits. Florida is the exception. (See my post on Florida.)
It struck me as I was going to sleep the other night that part of the irony of limited class size being such a selling point for classes advertised to adults is that it represents the antithesis of the problem of large classes in compulsory schooling. It has everything to do with the interplay of scarcity and abundance, of exclusivity and the commons.
Those who get to choose whether to go to school (adults), and those who get to choose exclusive schools, are presented with a scarce opportunity: the chance to seize one of a limited number of spots. But what’s the appeal of these spots and what is the rationale for their exclusiveness? To guarantee an abundance of the teacher’s attention and the chance to participate. Scarcity for the purpose of abundance. Public K-12 education, on the other hand, is the inverse: It’s abundant in that it’s open to all, but scarce once you’re in.
It may sound like I’m suggesting that “school choice” is the abundance we need, that children, like adults, should have an abundance of schools to choose from. I’m not—I’m basically agnostic on school choice. What I’m suggesting is that we take seriously what drives school choice when people do have an option. It is claimed that parents and students choose among curricular emphases. These are in fact hyped, sales-pitch-level differences in most cases. As I detail in my book, what drives school choice in the big picture is (a) the widespread preference for a smaller school with smaller classes and (b) classism and racism (i.e., exclusivity).
So rather than trusting choice per se to fix anything, I say we give people half of what they want: We give them smaller schools with smaller classes that are not based on a logic of exclusivity. Once all schools are small and have small classes, this form of abundance will no longer be scarce or exclusive. Chances are smallness will help reduce white flight and middle-class flight. Even if it doesn’t, it will at least fix the problem of the urban poor (of color) getting the largest schools and the largest classes.
Here is a graph from my book that shows how small classes in public schools go disproportionally to white communities. The school size disparity is even starker. And private school smallness clearly goes overwhelmingly to whites.
