In middle school my class contained 36 people and in high school - only 17. It was a huge difference.
The classroom was smaller and there was less distractions.
I was a friend or so-so friend with most of my class since we had no choice but to socialize with each other (in 36 to 1 I was pretty much alone because noone cared to make me part of their friend group).
There was a few groups of friends(sport boys, fashion girls, lazy people, boners, geeks) but they were working together and there was an overlaping area(the 4 sport boys were sort of away from the rest but fashion girls contained 2 of 4 lazy people, 2 pure fashion girls and 2 boners and boners contained 2 of 6 fashion girls and 2 of 4 geeks. I was in pure geeks).
There was no "group social control" since there was no "popular leader" of any sort. There was just not enough "followers". If even just 1 person in class didn't agree with a "popular guy" he/she didn't have the whole class against them because "leader" had no strong circle around him that other class members would be afraid of. Everyone was thinking for himself and his/her opinion was respected.
But that might be because we were all a group of weirdos. I can't say how it would be if there were other people in my class. More than half people of my class had some unusual traits that was making them stand out in their previous schools.
BTW:
Currently I am attending a weekend school(but it is a flexible time IT class for adults so it got different rules than most of schools/classes). There is about 11 people in my group but only 4-7 attends classes at a time (others are too lazy to come). It's great. We have a lot of fun ale everyone is free to do what he want/needs. You can talk to teacher at any moment, teacher listens to our suggestions and we can walk in class to talk to someone that sits too far away to hear our whisper. We can eat and drink during lesson if we need to(flexible time means we don't have breaks set). And whats the most important - we can do the exercises on our own pace. I am fast with it so I finish my examples fast, teacher checks it and then I am free. And instead of being bored I either start next lesson or help my classmates finish their examples. Or just play a game. It is no problem since I am done with my examples and teacher knows that. We can also come at any hour and leave at any hour as long as we attend 50% of the lessons time. I usually skip 1st 1,5 h and come to school about 9 instead of 7:40 because I like to sleep in the morning.
But surprisingly there is a "group social control" here(although there is no separated groups - whole class works as a single group of friends).
Actually... our whole class is the "leading group" against our poor teacher. Sometimes we make a break and go to a shop for a half of hour or more and the poor teacher stays in class and just waits for us. He can't tell us we do wrong since we set our own breaks. As long as we are done with our examples (if we don't do them at school we have to finish at home) we rule.
Of course we still need to get our grades and we have tests sometimes. But even then - its quite flexible (except the final government test which is really rigid one). For example today we have had a test. We have had a set time but we could choose which example we want to do (each example was different difficulty, I took the hardest one because I like challenge). And although at first it seemed like teacher tries to control us (he told us to be silent and not peek) soon he got laid-back again. I finished my test as the first one (I always do) and I started to help my classmates. He didn't say a word although he seen and heard me. Well, he knows our abilities anyway. The test was just a formality. He didn't care what method we use to finish the examples - our difficulty choice was important (and for some reason everyone took a difficulty accurate to their average achievements on exercises).
19 Oct 2014, 2:36 pm
