But now, 9th graders are grouped with the high schoolers (they’ve always been called freshmen, even when they were at the top of the JH), 6th graders are with 7th and 8th graders. And now the schools with grades 6-8 are called middle schools. Even on TV, “middle school” has replaced “junior high school” entirely
Has this change occurred all across America? Was “junior high school” un-PC, so “middle school” was invented? Are grades 1-5 going to be “low school”?
Many schools have put 6th graders with junior high programs for two main reasons: 1. This creates more room in already crowded elementary schools. 2. 6th grade curriculums have advanced to the point that many 6th graders are following a more advanced schedule as well. Many 6th graders these days are switching for every class and have teachers who are certified to teach one area, rather than elementary teachers who are certified to teach all areas.
Academic pressure from standardized testing will probably force more and more schools to go to this method. If you want your child to pass the 6th grade standardized test for math, for example, would you want them to have a teacher who has a math specific background and only teaches that subject, or a teacher who has very little math training, and has to juggle at least 4 different subjects each day?
I went to public school in South Dakota and at the time they had it divided up as…
Elementary: Grades 1-6
Junior High: Grades 7-9
High School: Grades 10-12
Since then it has been changed to the “middle school” system as mentioned in the OP.
The 6-8 “middle school” DOES seem to make a certain amount of sense.
In addition to points already mentioned, when you were in 9th grade in “junior high school”, you were sometimes classed as a “high school freshman”, and allowed physically into the “high school” building for certain functions and extracuricular activities on that basis, while still spending most of the day in the “junior high school” (in our case, they were actually two areas of one large junior/senior high school building). If you are going to have the “freshman” / “sophomore” / “junior” / “senior” labels, and say that a 9th grader may do things like try out for sports teams, it makes more sense for 9-12 to be “high school”.
I was in junior high school around when it was changed to “middle school”, and I was among the first ninth graders in the area to be sent to high school.
The explaination they gave us is that ninth-graders were too old to be in the school between elementary school and high school. The picked on the younger kids and brought bad influences (like drugs and gang affiliation) into the environment. Additionally, they would recieve a better education in high school with all of the resources (sports teams, drama clubs, varied classes) that a high school could offer. Plus organizing sports teams that mesh with high school sports teams got too wierd.
My junior high school (now called a middle school) has been grades 7 and 8 - 9 now being part of the high school - for 20 years or so. I don’t know the reason for the junior high>middle school change. I’m not aware of one being considered un-PC or anything.
Between 6th and 7th grade, I moved from Los Angeles County to adjacent Ventura County. In Los Angeles, it was the elementary K-5 and middle 6-8 system described above. My new school was an “Intermediate” school for 7th and 8th grades only. So, there’s yet another name for it.
I also recall that most of my 7th grade curriculum seemed to be a repeat of what I was taught the year before in the different school district. My grades were good that year.
I didn’t realize there were still some junior high schools in this great nation of ours. Thought they all made the change.
For what it’s worth, I know a couple of elementary school teachers. They and their softball buddies REALLY REALLY hate having 6th graders in middle school. They believe that the old system more closely matched average development.
Schools in the City of Buffalo, and the Catholic school system for the Buffalo metro area, had grades divided like:
Elementary school: K-8
High school: 9-12
There was no junior high school or middle school.
In the suburban public schools, the grades were divided like:
Elementary school: K-6 or K-5, depending on the district
Middle school: 7-9 or 6-8, depending on the district
High school: 10-12 or 9-12, depending on the district
I went to a 6-8 middle school. I remember that they explained the philosophy behind it when I entered, those few years ago.
Too bad I don’t remember what the philosophy was. The change was relatively recent though, some of the school stationary/paraphanalia still said Junior High School on it - this, of course, was LAUSD, so that was typical.
I think that there was a feeling that grouping 7-9 in one school created a hothouse of preteens all passing through puberty at the same time. I am not sure it was wrong. Where to put the ninth graders seemed especially problematic. When they were HS freshmen, they were more under control, being lower classmen. When they were top-of-the-heap in JHS, they were out-of-control. I don’t know if this is correct, but it was a common perception.
FWIW, I was one of the last people in Philadelphia to go K-8 in elementary school and 9-12 in HS. My elementary school disgorged all its 6B, 7, and 8 in 1950 as did the only two other elementary schools in the city that still went to 8th grade. (A new JHS was opening in the fall) and I went to one of the two HSs in the city that had a ninth grade. No one else from my neighborhood went to that one, although a couple may have gone to the girl’s school. I think it a shame that that system has been abandoned.
My children all went to elementary school K-6 or K-7 and then went off to HS, so they never experienced a middle school or JHS either. This is in Montreal, where HS goes only to grade 11.
Back when great beasts stalked the earth, it started out very simple:
K-7 were Elementary School
8-12 were High School.
Then the forced busing edict came out (starting with my 5th grade year), and this was how they set things up:
1-3 (one) Elementary School
4-5 (another) Elementary School
6-7 (yet another) Elementary School
8-9 Junior High School
10-12 High School
Since this was “The South,” there were separate schools for Blacks and Whites–but not because of Jim Crow laws. Brown vs. Board of Education had occurred many years previously. However, Blacks (for the most part, but not all) were still going to the previously all-Black schools, and Whites were still going to the previously all-White schools, probably just from inertia. That’s where everybody in the family before them had gone, so that’s where everybody kept going. That accounts for the small number of grades at each school. I don’t know of any Whites who went to the traditionally all-Black schools, so their B/W ratio was basically 100%-0%. In the traditionally all-White schools, the ration was about 80%-20% (W-B).
Once the busing was mandated, the ratios were then about 70%-30% (B-W), which caused a lot of cramped situations, and necessitated each school to drastically reduce the number of classes.
That’s exactly how it was when I was in school, too, but the year I was a Senior (1981-82) they changed it to the current system of K-5 (Elementary), 6-8 (Middle School) and 9-12 (High School).
The reasoning (as far as I can remember) was that since 9th graders were technically in “high school” and getting credit for classes, they belonged in high school. I don’t know why they changed the name of “junior high” to “middle school.”
**IIRC, the kids on Disney’s “Lizzie McGuire” and “Even Stevens” attend a Junior High. Or maybe my brain is fried from watching those dumb shows over and over with my kids…
I went to an elementary school from pre-k - 5, a Junior high from 6-8 and a (Senior) High school from 9-12. It was and still is called a senior high school.
Middle school is a horrible, awful, terrible thing. Take all those kids who are in the throes of puberty and put them together. Watch animalistic hell ensue.
Why, yes, I WAS the one person the whole school picked on, how did you know?
I went to school under the K-5, 6-8, 9-12 system myself in a couple of different districts.
You don’t have a 12th grade / senior year of high school? Everyone graduates at the end of 11th grade? Is this only in Montreal? Can one get into college without having had 12th grade? How did it come about that Montreal dispensed with 12th grade?
