Grouping in the One-Room School
There are other characteristics than size, however, to be considered in making up proper groups. In order to discover some of these characteristics, it will be well to consider certain concrete types of grouping exhibited in schools.
The type of grouping in the one-room, one-teacher school is in many respects the freest which can be found. The teacher can organize the school with no conflicts in program, because the whole program consists in distributing his own time. The classes can be of any size that the teacher’s judgment determines. The reasons for the grouping are purely and simply those which appeal to the teacher.
Under such circumstances what happens? The teacher naturally puts in one group the pupils who are for the first time taking up school work. In other groups he puts those pupils who have approximately the same attainments in each subject. In the classes beyond the first many complications arise. There are some pupils who read well but seem to be deficient in knowledge of number. Other pupils with a taste for arithmetic are very forward in that branch and do only indifferently well in reading and spelling. It is not uncommon in the one-room school for the teacher to regard these differences in ability in particular subjects as adequate reasons for distributing the pupils differently in different subjects. It comes about in the course of time that one and the same pupil will be in the third reading class, in the fourth geography class, and in the fifth or sixth class in arithmetic, while another pupil who has attained to the fifth reader will be lingering behind in the third class in arithmetic.