Teaching and Class Size

A Times article (Part I, March 31) quotes a U.S. Department of Education report criticizing teachers for complaining about large class size when “the number of students they teach has never been fewer and their workload has never been lighter.”

I am obliged to teach three or four English literature and writing classes three quarters a year, with as many as 120 students per term. I am also expected to assign essay exams and papers rather than resort to short-answer tests, and to grade them myself rather than relegate them to student assistants. Careful reading and grading of such essays takes about one-half hour each; this means I must spend up to 60 hours on each writing assignment, on top of at least 30 hours a week in class, preparation, office hours, committee work, and meetings (in addition to keeping up with scholarly reading and writing). Community college and high school English teachers’ course load is even heavier. I would like to see Tommy M. Tomlinson, author of the report, spend a term teaching our classes and then tell us to our faces that our workload isn’t excessive.

Tomlinson’s report says class size would need to be reduced to 15 to improve student performance (mine are 28-30, California high school classes run to 35 or 40), but then he says this much-needed reform is out of the question because it would be too expensive and because schools are having trouble filling faculty vacancies. He doesn’t mention the main reason for such vacancies--the disgracefully low salaries and demoralizing working conditions. This report is yet another example of the unwillingness of the Reagan Administration and conservative taxpayers to pay the price for the educational excellence they claim they desire.

DONALD LAZERE

Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo