Ayvazo and Ward make the very astute observation that traditional whole-group teaching styles rely on the abilities of one teacher to differentiate between the various learning styles of some 20-30 students at one time (2005). It is because of these inevitable differences between students who are in one class together that the idea of classwide peer tutoring has become more and more popular.
With a simple system of classwide peer tutoring, teachers are able to break up the class a little bit and call on the students themselves to offer support to their peers. This can be achieved either with team activities, or more effectively, through pairing students and assigning them certain tasks to work together on. This method has been employed by a number of teachers through the years, however studies have shown that concentrated use of classwide peer tutoring has benefits that should not be ignored.
The practice of placing students within a larger class group into working pairs is not new, however the extent to which this method might be educationally functional has been largely overlooked (Fulk and King, 2001). When used within the traditional whole-group teaching framework, pairing up is done for any number of reasons: to cut down on materials, to reward the students for good grades and behavior or to help them learn to work as part of a team. Classwide peer tutoring focuses on the latter reasoning as well as the fact that students seem to be more focused on the task at hand when working with a partner who is engaged in the same task.
In studies concerning the learning patterns of Hispanic children in American schools, it was found that these students are among the most likely to be placed in remedial classes and to struggle with their studies. When the learning environment changes from the whole-group mentality and shifts towards classwide peer tutoring, however, Hispanic students were better able to comprehend their studies and to keep up with the rest of their class (Leasher et al, 2007).
Another impressive outcome of the classwide tutoring scheme is its effect on the reading skills of students. In situations where students were paired up for reading exercises, it was found that the oral fluency of such children was higher than that of children who had received traditional whole-group instruction. Timed readings of the paired students went more quickly than their counterparts, and given the concerns of educators that their students are struggling year after year with literacy, this is an excellent revelation (Baldwin Veerkamp, 2007).
Carmen notes that peer tutoring not only has repercussions in regular school classes but that it can be helpful in teaching children with disabilities as well (1998). Given the data, peer tutoring has an incredible ability to not only shrink class sizes but to encourage students themselves to take responsibility for their own learning and the support of another student. Given the growing classrooms of the United States, the practical benefits of classwide peer tutoring aren’t difficult to recognize.
Reference
- Ayvazo, Shiri, Philip Ward. Effects of Classwide Peer Tutoring on the Catching Performance of Children With and Without Autism in Physical Education. (2005). Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport: Research Consortium Abstracts, 76(1), A112. Retrieved October 2, 2007, from Research Library database. (Document ID: 804362371).
- Baldwin Veerkamp, Mary, Debra M Kamps, Lori Cooper. (2007). The Effects of Classwide Peer Tutoring on the Reading Achievement of Urban Middle School Students. Education & Treatment of Children, 30(2), 21-51. Retrieved October 2, 2007, from ProQuest Psychology Journals database. (Document ID: 1328616241).
- Barbara M Fulk, Kathy King. (2001). Classwide peer tutoring at work. Teaching Exceptional Children, 34(2), 49. Retrieved October 2, 2007, from ProQuest Education Journals database. (Document ID: 90911530).
- Carmen Arreaga-Mayer (1998). Increasing active student responding and improving academic performance through classwide peer tutoring. Intervention in School and Clinic, 34(2), 89. Retrieved October 2, 2007, from Research Library database. (Document ID: 35764675).
- Leasher Dennis Madrid, Madeline Canas, Mona Ortega-Medina. (2007). Effects of Team Competition Versus Team Cooperation in Classwide Peer Tutoring. The Journal of Educational Research, 100(3), 155-160,192. Retrieved October 2, 2007, from ProQuest Psychology Journals database. (Document ID: 1214294421).
Class, Death And Vietnam: A Review Of Christian Appy’s Working Class War.
Class, Death and Vietnam:
A Review of Christian Appy’s Working Class War.
University of North Carolina Press, 1993.
The American involvement in the Vietnam War remains an important issue in American politics. This is because it takes into itself executive powers, Congressional oversight, the American role abroad, popular opinion and, as this review is concerned with, class and its relation to the makeup of combat forces. The book here under review deals informally with the experiences of working class men in Vietnam. This is “informal” in the sense, while the book is largely written in normal expository prose, a good portion of the work is concerned with anecdotal memories of many who fought in the war and their experiences both as working class soldiers and their life after the war. While the anecdotal approach can be irritating and non-methodological, it does have its benefits in seeing the real opinions of these men.
The major issue that the author seeks to deal with is not merely the experience of combat, that has been done over and again. What is more important to the author is dealing with the contradiction of drafting men into a war that they could not understand and did not identify with. Ultimately, this argument rests on the idea that French Indochina is far too removed from the normal American consciousness in a way that Germany is not. But this argument rests upon the idea that Vietnam was not worth fighting, and even more, that many thought the US was fighting on the wrong side (174-176). In turn, this argument rests on the assumption that the Nazis were the ultimate evil, and the Stalinist system in both the USSR and Hanoi was not. Since Stalin murdered more than Hitler, and this is usually the justification of the US battling in Europe, it would seem to work double for Vietnam and Korea on the same argument. Yet, the author cannot make this connection since he is a radical leftist by his own admission. However, he does hold that, since World War II demanded a much larger commitment from the US population, the class issues did not matter as much, due to the huge size of the draft. Therefore, the class issues did not matter nearly as much and therefore (one might assume) the war was much more popular.
The real meat of the book, and one worth reading, is that, by 1970 (and this seems to be the main year that the author deals with, odd since it was so late in the war), a full 80% of the American combat troops in Vietnam were of the lower classes (11-13; 23-30). But this figure is likely higher in that many “white collar” workers were of the clerical class, only slightly removed from the stereotypical blue collar work. Of course, those who went to college or seminary received deferments until they finished their studies, leading to a large spike in the number of graduate degrees at the time. And even worse, those who did not fight ended up doing much better, both mentally and professionally, than those who went (220ff).
The author cites several polls in 1970 that show, despite stereotypes to the contrary, that roughly 48% of the working class wanted the US to withdraw from the war, while 40% of white collar workers did (41). These poll numbers say very little. First, 1970 was a very late date. By that time, the US was involved in Vietnam longer than in Europe in World War II. Secondly, the very fact that these numbers are close undercuts the class argument of the book. And furthermore, the fact that a slight majority of working class people wanted the US to remain in Vietnam at this late date in the war completely undercuts the argument of the book. The fact is that the Vietnam war, regardless of the well concerned and funded marches on Washington, remained vaguely popular right up to the early 1970s.
Another substantial element of the work that bears mentioning is that the working class justified their laboring status precisely in their going to Vietnam while the upper classes did not. Marxists call this “mixed consciousness” in their typical condescending way, in that the working classes embrace their status and are proud of it, while drawing “reactionary” conclusions from it. In other words, their class solidarity is not based on their exploitation by the bosses, but rather the fact that they fought for their country and the white collars did not.
What is true however, is that the working class fought the Vietnam war, while the white collars stayed home by and large. The American combat troops, however, came to loathe the war for the following set of reasons. First, more abstractly, they could not identity with the stated aims of “containing communism.” But they could a generation earlier, identify with containing Naziism and fighting with Stalin. It seems that the unstated assumption that makes “sense” out of this is that the war in Europe was backed by a huge propaganda campaign both by the state and by private media. Vietnam was just the opposite, anti-war views were a regular scene on the nightly news. Of course, the fact that the war was televised played its part. But more abstractly, the South Vietnamese government could not seem to get its act together. The Americans could not be said to be fighting for “democracy” when the government of the South was an unstable and oligarchic military dictatorship, and an incompetent one to boot (49-51; 267). This lack of competence in the South Vietnamese government, in this writer’s view, is the main reason why the US was forced to withdraw. Further, in all the literature on Vietnam, the specific policies and issues with the Southern government and its inability to gain the support of the Southern peoples, is the one major area that is largely left un analyzed and hence, a gaping hole exists in the understanding of this war.
Third, the US combat troops were fighting an unconventional war. The American, trained in typical European warfare, was unprepared to fight a guerilla war, but was prepared to fight such a war on the Japanese-occupied islands a generation earlier. Friendly fire kills were a large proportion of American casualties for this reason. The strategy, according to Appy, is to wait until patrols got ambushed, and then the air strikes would be called in to hit the unit that did the ambushing (184-187). But as far as strategy goes, this seems almost calculated to create mutiny. Further, such issues as hazing (86-87), the racial angle, where black troops failed to see how the Vietnamese nationalist was his enemy (277), and the question of self-determination (210-211) all eventually worked on the consciousness of the working class combat troops. Add to this the appalling poverty of the Vietnamese people and the young age of the average Vietnamese soldier (193-195; 174-175), the combat soldier came to hate the war.
There is so much wrong with this argument it is hard to see where to start. All wars are loathsome. Korea also saw the killing of 15 and 16 year old kids fighting for Mao. What American soldier could have possibly identified with the war aims of World War I or the Spanish-American war? Or Korean for that matter? Yet no major anti-war movement came into existence and no pontificating about class discrimination came to play a role. What was different about Vietnam? If anything, this interesting but ultimately misguided book forces us to ask that question. The answer can only be that the elites both in government and in media rejected the war, and this was because they had rejected the Cold War in general. But if this is even partially true, then it fails the consistency test. If the US fought in Europe to fight Hitler, who is said to have killed over 5 million in camps, then how was the Cold War a problem, when Stalin and his creature, Mao, killed far more? Not to mention the uncomfortable fact that the Cold War is the direct result of the US intervention in Europe on the side of the men who killed the most, Stalin and Beria.
Ultimately, the only real explanation is that the left, including many government and media elites, came to identity with Marxism, regardless of its human cost. This is what made Vietnam different, and what really undercuts the entire premise fo the book under review. The book ultimately fails at its task, to justify the anger at the war, but also raises more questions than its answers.
The Benefits Of Lower Student-Teacher Ratio In Classrooms
Introduction
One of the key issues that the government is looking into is the decrease of the quality of education received by Americans in pre-school, elementary and secondary. The rise in academic achievement gap between Caucasians and members of the minority groups such as Hispanics and African-Americans further alarmed the government to take into action regarding this matter. Many suggestions have been made in order to address this issue. One of this is the reduction of student-teacher ratio in schools in the United States by lowering the sizes of classrooms. This paper will present the benefits of the reduction of classroom sizes with regards to the academic achievement of the students as well as the disadvantages experts have seen with this method for the improvement of the quality of education in American schools.
Smaller Classroom Sizes in the United States
It has now been widely accepted by members of the local government and school district officials that smaller classrooms are able to boost the quality of education and academic performance seen among the American youth, particularly those who come from minority groups and those from low-income families. This is because the number of students that a teacher would need to look after is smaller as compared to the student population seen in regular classrooms today (Blatchford, Bassett, Goldstein & Martin 2003; Blatchford & Martin 1998; Finn, Pannozzo & Achilles 2003).
The interest of local school districts in the different states in the United States to lower the population of students in the classrooms began after the results of Project STAR done in Tennessee was released. Prior to this, the publication “A Nation at Risk” was released emphasizing the need for schools to re-evaluate the academic quality received by American students who have been seen to fall behind students from other European and Asian countries. One of the suggestions presented by the publication was the reduction of classroom size. Based on this, the state of Tennessee launched a state-wide study on this proposal to validate its effectiveness. The results of the study were promising. Based on the study conducted, researchers noticed that there were major changes that occurred on the students’ learning behavior, particularly on the engagement of the student on the subject matter, classroom work and availability of social support. The willingness of the student to become involved in school work is crucial for his or her academic achievement because these deal with the processes that contribute to learning within the classroom. If the student is not willing to engage in activities in school, that student will be less likely to understand and learn the material being presented by the teacher (Blatchford, Bassett, Goldstein & Martin 2003; Finn, Pannozzo & Achilles 2003; Nye, Hedges & Konstantopoulos 2002; Pong & Pallas 2001).
Another benefit for the reduction of the student population in a classroom is that this will allow a lower student-teacher ratio in schools. This would then allow the teachers to know their students on a more personal level. As such, they would be able to use a wider variety of teaching strategies in order to meet the needs of each and every student in the class. Because teachers change their strategies when class sizes are reduced, they are able to provide more individualized instruction and a higher quality of instruction to their students. They are also able to maximize school hours since a lower student population in the classroom would mean that the teacher would have to discipline a smaller number of students. Thus, allowing the teacher to spend more time on instruction and learning and less time on classroom management and student discipline (Blatchford & Martin 1998; Finn, Pannozzo & Achilles 2003; Pong & Pallas 2001).
On the part of the students, they are able to become more socially and academically engaged on the lectures and classroom works. This would result to the students learning and fostering behaviors that are considered to be pro-social, making them able to follow rules and regulations of the school, foster relationships with their teachers to allow them to become more comfortable in participating actively in classroom activities (Finn, Pannozzo & Achilles 2003).
Limitations of Classroom Population Reduction
While the results of the Project STAR study were promising and further supported by other similar studies such as the Project SAGE study conducted in Wisconsin, many have been skeptical with regards to the benefits promised by the studies in terms of the increase of the academic achievement of students in the country. The primary concern seen by many researchers was the validity of the study conducted regarding this. Because the studies done on the effectiveness of class size reduction is often done in small scale and on a short-term basis, one cannot be definite on whether the positive effects noticed are due to the special circumstances surrounding the experiment or whether they would have occurred if the use of smaller classes had happened in a more natural setting (Nye, Hedges & Konstantopoulos 2002). This speculation is further heightened with studies conducted in schools in different European countries such as China, Singapore and the United Kingdom have stated that students in these countries are able to excel academically despite being placed in classrooms whose student populations are the same or even larger as compared to the regular classroom population of the schools in the United States (Blatchford, Bassett, Goldstein & Martin 2003; Nye, Hedges & Konstantopoulos 2002).
With this conflicting information, another issue skeptics of the reduction of classroom population method have looked into is the cost that would be handled by the local government in order to implement this change in the classroom student population. In order to ensure that the student population in classrooms of a particular school is reduced, more classrooms must be created and along with this, more and more teachers would need to be hired. This may cause many school districts to hire teachers that have limited or no experience in teaching. This being the case, the quality of education given to schools with lower school population may actually decrease rather than increase because of the lack of experience of the teachers that may be hired in order to ensure that the student-teacher ratio in schools is kept at a minimum, making this method to improve the quality of education in school systems to become extremely costly (Blatchford, Bassett, Goldstein & Martin 2003; Nye, Hedges & Konstantopoulos 2002).
Finally, because of many of the students that are placed in classrooms with smaller student population are those that are considered as students at-risk and composed of students from minority ethnic groups, the quality of talk and work in groups can be relatively at a low level, and that the students may not always be confident of what is required of them. Some students may also feel outmoded and discredited when placed in classrooms with smaller student populations because of the composition of the students they are placed with. This may cause students to foster feelings to become anti-social and withdrawn from their schoolmates, which is contrary to what school districts may be expecting (Blatchford & Martin 1998; Finn, Pannozzo & Achilles 2003).
Conclusion
Just like any proposed change, the move to reduce the number of students in the classrooms of the schools in the United States have been seen to have both positive and negative effects. On one hand, smaller student populations in the classrooms would allow a teacher to concentrate on the needs of each of the students in the class with regards to their learning capacity. Because there is a lower number of students to be disciplined, classroom management becomes minimal, allowing the teacher to be able to concentrate on instruction methods, resulting in the students being able to learn more in school. On the other hand, because the reduction of student population in the classroom would mean that more teachers would need to be hired in order to keep the student-teacher ratio at a minimum, there is a possibility that teachers lacking the needed experience in order to effectively handle and teach the subject matter to a group of students would be hired. This would mean that instead of increasing the academic achievement rate of the students, this movement would do the complete opposite, making the changes extremely costly.
Minimizing the number of students in a classroom would be beneficial in the pursuit of state officials to improve the quality of education that is received by the students. However, there are also other determinants that need to be taken into consideration with regards to the students enrolled in the school which may hinder them to achieve the quality of education provided. For example, the socio-economic status of the family of the student as well as their point-of-view with the attainment of education may affect how the student behaves in class and how well they are able to acquire the information being passed on. Before this would be implemented, state officials should create their own studies on the effectiveness of this method to the improvement of the quality of education received taking into consideration other factors such as the availability of experienced teachers.
References
Blatchford, P., Bassett, P., Goldstein, H. & Martin, C. (October 2003). Are class size
difference related to pupils’ educational progress and classroom processes? Findings
from the Institute of Education class study of children aged 5-7 years. British
educational research journal, 29(5), 709-30.
Blatchford, P. & Martin, C. (June 1998). Research review: the effects of class size on
classroom processes: “it’s a bit like a treadmill working hard and getting nowhere
fast!” British journal of educational studies, 46(2), 118-37.
Finn, J. D., Pannozzo, G. M. & Achilles, C. M. (Autumn 2003). The “why’s” of class size:
student behavior in small classes. Review of educational research, 73(3), 321-68.
Nye, B., Hedges, L. V. & Konstantopoulos, S. (Autumn 2002). Do low-achieving students
benefit more from small classes? Evidence from the Tennessee class size experiment.
Education evaluation and policy analysis, 24(3), 201-17.
Pong, S. & Pallas, A. (Autumn 2001). Class size and eight-grade math achievement in the
United States and abroad. Educational evaluation and policy analysis, 23(3), 251-73.