Trying to focus in a classroom full of 30+ people can get… chaotic. When you’re given problems such as “5(6x-19) +½=8(x+1)” and “What is the function of a monosaccharide?”, having to wait minutes on end to even get help from a teacher is extremely frustrating. 

Overcrowding in schools creates a negative environment for students and staff. It causes distractions, makes getting help harder, and overstimulation. 

Distractions are always going to be in a classroom. But when there are so many that it gets to be impossible to function, that’s when the problem begins. Putting an excessive number of kids in a classroom is asking for a disaster.  

The main cause of many distractions comes from the kids. Whether that is from the items they bring to school, consistent chatter, or even the small noises that come from the smallest things such as the clicking of a pen. That comes from a small number of kids, but placing more kids in the same room multiplies that level of distraction. 

School is all about learning. In order to learn we must make mistakes and most importantly ask questions. Here’s a scenario. It’s 4th period geometry and kids are doing individual work. A kid is stuck on a problem that they don’t get. They raise their head from the problem, only to see around 8 other kids raising their hands as well. It’s going to be a while before they are going to get the help they need to understand the material and move forth with their work. That classroom had around 30 kids in it. Because there was such an excessive number of kids, there were more questions that had to be answered and it took more time to answer all of them. 

Adding onto the problems with distractions, the consistency of the distractions and severity of them causes insane overstimulation for everyone in the classroom, students and teachers. Overstimulation is defined as “Overstimulation, or sensory overload, is when your senses are just completely overloaded with information, making it difficult (or sometimes near impossible) to fully process the information you are receiving” (therapywitholivia.com). The constant chatter, clicking of pens, overwhelming smell of BO, and harsh lighting in a classroom could definitely be an example of overstimulation. With the information given, it is intelligible to understand that the excessive number of kids is causing people to shut down and not be able to function. 

So, if overcrowding causes all these problems, why do schools continue to show overcrowding. Well, in order to accommodate to the increase in students, new schools must be built according to the population. The problem is that building a school is expensive. Some districts don’t have the kind of money to buy materials, pay for labor, and pay for land from scratch.  

Also, people don’t want to pay more from their taxes that goes towards that payment. “cbo.gov” says that “The federal government supports education by providing about 8.5 percent of the funding for K-to-12 schooling, helping students finance higher education through loans and grants, and giving favorable tax treatment to educational institutions”. 

All in all, overcrowding enforces too many issues that must be resolved fast. The future of our world is in the hands of the children in school right now, however the world isn’t giving them the stability for everybody to say that they are confident they are going to fine.