Marquel, TPVs NYTimes Too Many Teachers Section correspondent, was dreaming about Circe, the witch of Aeaea, who transformed men into pigs and pigs into heros, when he read The Times‘ report that the “School of One” is the path to the future.
In Reaching Math Students One by One, the Times publicized the digital-based program wchich lets teachers divide up a class of 30 students into 30 different levels at which to teach them critical skills. Essentially, it is a computer program that kind of teaches one on one. But the title gives it away. The goal is to have each school with just one teacher. It goes like this, according to a high level education official actually in charge of the program.
“Once people get used to having computers, the necessity of teachers becomes perceptibly less,” she told me.
“So the goal is to get rid of teachers?” I asked.
“Of course not. How could you have a school without a teacher?” She asked.
“My sentiments exactly,” I agreed. “So then where are we going with this?”
“This issue is how many teachers?” She asserted.
“How many do you think?” I asked.
“The ideal size is 15-18 students, all the experts agree on that.”
“30 plus.” She said.
“Yes, and if you think about it, it’s impossible to teach that size effectively.”
“We won’t. So if you understand that 30 plus is impossible and no teaching can occur with that size, we may as well have 60.” She proposed.
“But no worse either. Impossible with 30, with 60, even 120.” She said.
“Think of the savings. A typical elementary school has six grades. Six teachers is all you need. Tremendous saving and no loss of teacher effectiveness. We could cut the budget of the DOE by about 85 percent. Wouldn’t that be amazing?” She asked.
“Three grades. Three teachers. Savings there almost 90 percent.” She crowed.
“Well if it’s all wasted anyway, why spend it. I think we could even double the teachers’salaries and still save 82 percent. Do you know what that means?” She asked.
“Roughly that either you or I have lost our minds,” I said.
“To be more exact, with an annual budget of$25 billion, we will save $21,500,000,000. Over 21 BILLION dollars saved, with nothing lost in the process!” She shrieked.
I stood up. I knew which one if us had gone off the rails. But I was disturbed, too. In a way she was right. If you can’t teach to 30, then why not 60, or 120? Journalism schools, which I never attended, commonly have classes with over 100 students. Medical schools too.
I wondered what would happen to all those redundant teachers. Medical school? Not a chance. Maybe journalism.
***
By Marquel: Half-baked Solutions
oy…so many problems… I am going back to reading about shirtless Putin
so close to home. I cannot find it funny
so aldoux huxley…so brave new worldish. what is the purpose? They make it harder and harder not to be the 1%?
I liked it. I find it funny
look at those faces…so sad…yet so funny
me too.