Thread by @wrathofgnon

On human scale in education: “The setting with fewer people, because it is undermanned, calls forth a much greater response in the participants. There is a negative relationship between institutional size and individual participation.”
—Kirkpatrick Sale, The Human Scale Revisited

“For school activities, particularly in music, drama, journalism, and student government, participation reached a peak in high schools with enrollments between 61 and 150, and was anywhere from three to twenty times as great as in the largest school.”
— Kirkpatrick Sale

“Comparing the settings of the smallest schools—communities of 1,000-2,000—with those of the largest—a city of 101,000—Barker found a wider participation by the adolescents in the business, organizational, religious, and educational settings of the towns than of the city.”
— Sale

“Allan Wicker, for example, reported that the cognitive complexity of students in smaller high schools-with junior classes of twenty to fifty members—was significantly higher than those where junior classes numbered 400 or so.”
— Kirkpatrick Sale, The Human Scale Revisited

“A summary of the literature in 1997 concluded, decades of research shows that student achievement in small schools is at least equal—and often superior—to achievement in large schools.”
— Kirkpatrick Sale, The Human Scale Revisited

“There is no difference of opinion regarding the size of the group (within the institution); all agree that it must be kept small.”
— Kirkpatrick Sale, The Human Scale Revisited