Does Class Size Matter?

Students thrive to be the best they can be, and teachers want the same thing for their students. The average number of students in a high school course in America is 24.1 per one class. Whether this number is a good amount depends on the person asked. Classes around the country and the world have various sizes. Class size is a controversial issue. Many feel there are far too many people in each class, while others think that the number of students in a classroom does not really matter. Class size has an effect on student learning because it reduces the time spent with each student by teachers, increases the chance of distractions and disruptions, while the arguments against this are somewhat weak and easily disproven. Firstly, class size
To start, it is difficult for teachers to see all that is happening in a normal sized class, much less a large class. This allows for students to talk to each other and use their phones, with far less chance of being caught than if they were in a smaller class. This is bad because it allows students to do many negative things, including possible cheating. To continue, teacher statements, including one from retired teacher Jill Jenkins, explain that larger class sizes increase the chance of students communicating distractingly to each other. This causes disruptions of the teacher that are very impolite, as well as distractions of the entire class, making it harder to work for the students to focus. The distractions make it harder for people to work consistently, and students who want and thrive to be great should not be constantly thrown off course by a large, distracting class. Though there are many reasons why class size has an effect on learning, many believe that the class size has no correlation with
A common argument from this viewpoint is that lowering class sizes will not be successful because many of the methods teachers use are for larger classes. While this makes some sense, there is a much greater need for the smaller classes, and teachers can change. Allowing for smaller classes for a few years would give teachers time to understand the new situation and adapt, fixing the issue and canceling out the argument stated by the opposition. Next, people say that smaller classes means having to hire more teachers, which causes a much greater chance of poor teachers. This is a somewhat logical argument, however, the chance of hiring a teacher that cannot help the students is minimal, as without stressful class sizes, the workload is much more viable. Trusting that the teachers that are hired will teach well shows that the opposition’s argument is much weaker than the one stated throughout the essay. After this, the opposing side claims that the only aspect that needs to be changed in large classes is how successful technology is to interact with each student. This argument is logical in a sense, but as the essay has stated before, technology in classrooms allows for many distractions. Also, a statement from Jill Jenkins shows that the cluttered space and lack of interaction caused by these devices causes students to go to inappropriate websites and wastes time. To finish, larger class