ABSTRACT
At a meeting at a city high school a cherubic-looking white-haired chemistry teacher kept nodding and agreeing with the argument I made in my presentation to the faculty that the number of students assigned to each teacher had to be radically reduced. She balked, however, at any compromise on her wish to teach nothing but chemistry, at least as she defined chemistry. I reasoned with her: this is too poor a school to more than double the teaching force. Couldn't she teach some mathematics to kids who were her chemistry students? I'm not a math-ematics teacher, she replied. I countered, I'm not suggesting that you teach advanced math, just algebra. I'm not a math teacher. Can you teach chemistry to any standard without math? That's different. How? She broke into tears. I would rather teach two hundred students chemistry than teach anything else. But you can't know that many kids at all … I know, I know, I know. (Theodore Sizer, 1992)
