Middle schools serve students who are between childhood and adolescence.
Middle schools in the United States educate students aged 10 to 15, who are between childhood and adolescence. The schools, also called junior high schools, carry grades six to eight or seven to nine. While the schools were originally designed to better prepare students for high school, later curriculum focused on the emotional needs of the specific age group.
Early Beginnings
As the twentieth century opened, students attended eight years of graded school followed by four years of high school. Attitudes toward this style of schooling started to change around 1910 as middle schools opened in California and Ohio. In the 1930s, educators started pushing for schools that catered to the emotional needs of students in the middle school age group. By the 1960s, there were more than 7,000 junior high schools in the country.
First Middle School
The first junior high school in the United States was Indianola Junior High School in Columbus, Ohio, in 1909. At the time, 52 percent of students were dropping out of school before the tenth grade, and only seven percent of students graduated from high school. School officials hoped that the school separate from the elementary school would better prepare students for the academic rigors of high school. The building still stands and houses the Indianola Informal School.
1960s Changes
Around the 1960s, educators began to focus on the fact that children are dramatically changing physically and socially around the middle school years, and they are also better able to think abstractly. They recognized that curriculum needed to correlate with development and not only stress academic high school preparation. Methods such as teams, interdisciplinary curriculum and faculty advisory came into play to create a caring environment for the students and to try and mediate between the academic and social realms.
1980s Research
The 1980s brought in another wave of thinking concerning middle schools. Many researchers, advocates and educators were becoming concerned that young people were not being adequately served and that drug use and sex seemed to be on the rise. There was a push for middle schools in "at-risk" areas to be turned more into full-service centers for young teens. The transition into middle school from the more student-centric environment of elementary school also proved rough for many young people.
Tags: high school, junior high, better prepare, better prepare students, between childhood, between childhood adolescence
