In most US school systems, middle school marks a transition from students having one teacher and classroom for most of the day to having multiple (6 to 8) different teachers and classrooms during the day. So that is potentially a 5X multiplier on the number of different social interactions that each student will have to deal with each day. On top of that they have to learn each teacher's style and expectations in order to do well.
I used to think the difficulty was due to the onset of adolescence but I think if you forced most working adults through such a transition for a year they would not fare well. This is why most people hate service jobs.
I taught science in grades 3-8 in low income US schools. The main difference between 3-5 and 6-8 is puberty. These humans are undergoing the most radical shift in their hormones and behavioral regime in their entire life. They go from caring what their teacher thinks to caring what their peers think; the kids get louder, stronger, less respectful of authority, more likely to join gangs or do drugs. Everyone gets a lot more talkative and disruptive. Middle schoolers are simply the hardest age group to teach.
> Middle schoolers are simply the hardest age group to teach.
But how much of that might be structural?
Under ideal circumstances, a K-5 student has one teacher each year, in a class largely composed of students they were in a class with the previous year.
We throw them into 6th grade, now they have what, 5-6 teachers for 40-50 minutes each? In my district, two elementary schools feed each middle, so their grade size has doubled and even many of the students they shared an elementary school with will be unfamiliar.
That's a whole lot of social upheaval to subject 11 y/o kids to. Puberty is just icing on the cake.
I remember before hitting Middle School (maybe in 5th or 6th grade?) my elementary school rotated the classes in groups of three throughout each day as a way to transition to Middle School's much larger un-grouped class transition.
By example: Teachers A, B, C, D, E, and F were teachers of that grade. Classes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 were classes of that grade. Before lunch the teacher+class pairings were A1, B2, C3, D4, E5, F6. After lunch the pairings were A2, B3, C1, D5, E6, F4. After a break the pairings were A3, B1, C2, D6, E4, F5.
This allowed us to get used to the idea of rotating teachers and we interacted with the other classes in our group a bit during rotations and breaks. However, it only raised the number of teachers to interact with by two, and we didn't actually sit and learn with a larger class. It made for a great transition.
That school had a bunch of other really great opportunities to start giving children more responsibilities, too. It had an inter-school mail system run by the students, as well as a bookstore, snack stand, and a few other things. For context, this was in the USA in the early 2000s.
I think it goes both ways. If you know someone well, you can be a much better teacher to them. You can predict what they will have trouble with, what will make them happy, how and when to introduce things to them, etc.
Same as interacting with coworkers. And in management, really.
My elementary school age kids have had multiple teachers since kindergarten. Throughout the week, they go to separate classes for health and fitness (i.e. "PE"), music, art, and the library.
I don't think the transition to more separate specialized classes is a big part of it. It's mostly hormones and their brain powering up the social reasoning facilities and emotions without yet having the life experience to manage those feelings.
Middle school is right around the time that your social status and reputation — your image in the eyes of your peers — becomes an important part of your sense of self and self worth. But that status and reputation is heavily influenced by everyone around you. It's like all of a sudden these kids all wake up with giant targets floating above their heads and rocks in their hands.
By high school, they will have internalized some of the norms around how to not use the weapons they have — in large part because of their experiences now — but middle school is a time of experimentation and mistake-making, so there ends up being a lot of random collateral emotional damage.
I attended a small school system where there was one class per grade from Kindergarten through 5th grade. What they called junior high school consisted of three rooms, which were the home rooms for 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. Students moved around among these three rooms for classes from the three different teachers (English, science, and history/social science) and a visiting math teacher who might have had an office somewhere else but didn't have a homeroom.
This made an easier transition to high school, which had the full (6 to 8) different teachers and classrooms. There we had 3 different classrooms and 4 different teachers.
Interesting. If transitioning from amount of social interactions is difficult it might also explain someone having personal difficulty when going from say, an infrastructure gig to a software support gig.
Have you considered not combining "a place of learning" with "a violent, over controlled, over policed, oppressive bureaucratic autocracy, that replicates all the usual dynamics found in prisons"?
There's definitely some insane authoritarian teachers. I've always found it incredibly abusive and offensive that anyone is expected to ask permission to go to the restroom. Nobody appreciates being treated like a subhuman beast.
Based on my experience, nothing quite kills the joy for exploration and learning like school. It's brainwashing training: teaching you to uncritically accept facts from authority figures. This is probably most evident in propagandist history courses which carefully omit any inconvenient details.
>Based on my experience, nothing quite kills the joy for exploration and learning like school.
I thought I hated Math till I got to university. I had to take a bunch of remedial courses on high school level math but ultimately ended up with a math minor in addition to my CS major because I enjoyed the subject so much.
The K-12 school system is fundamentally broken but I don't know what the solution is.
As somebody who's attended a North American public school in my life, this is roughly the slap in the face I feel when politicians talk about abolishing vouchers or charter schools, with no mention of the appalling baseline quality of public education, despite dramatically higher spending than most or all other developed nations. Meanwhile, those voucher systems and charter schools have been the thrust of almost all improvement of education in America.
At the end of the day, it is rich to hear from politicians who have literally never attended a public school about how we should send our kids to schools they've avoided. A greater proportion of public educators send their own kids to private schools than the general public, by a long shot.
Most politicians come from the middle class, so I'd wager most of them attended public school.
The most predictive stat for educational attainment is household income and parental educational attainment, so if you want to fix education, you need to fix income inequality.
> [...] this is roughly the slap in the face I feel when politicians talk about abolishing vouchers or charter schools [...]
I'm not from the US and I'm unfamiliar with the concept of charter schools. If I understand Wikipedia correctly, these are privately owned and operated schools which receive public funding, is that right? If so, in which way would they help or improve any of the hardships associated with Middle School?
Weirdly, middle school was one of the high-points of grade school for me. It saw the initiation of nearly every important interest and passion that I have (mostly by coincidence, but still):
- Middle school band introduced me to music - both listening and playing - which was life-changing for me. Band remained the best thing in my life through the rest of gradeschool, and music still is.
- I learned to play guitar for the first time, joining a wonderful freeform after-school club for it
- I discovered Tolkien, JRPGs, and Morrowind (and their respective music), all of which seeded my imaginative life in ways that are still felt today
- I tried programming for the first time (over a summer), awakening another passion and putting me on a trajectory for my future career
Socially, middle-school was rough. But that was true for pretty much all of grade school. And inwardly, middle school was amazing. I still look back on it fondly.
I got to do so many cool extracurricular activities, and finally had enough know-how to start teaching myself stuff.
I learned to play chess from a high ranked player, I started teaching myself python, I learned 3D drafting basics, played soccer, learned to skate, etc etc.
I was finally given enough leash to do those things, and to hangout with friends outside of school, including overnight.
I got to go on soccer trips and stuff with my traveling team. My parents never went on those trips so I'd always be driven/housed by someone else and got to see what normal people were actually like.
I finally realized how off my parents were, and how verbally and emotionally abusive and unfair they could be, so I started seeking out extracurriculars at every opportunity which was awesome.
For some reason, hardly any of the guys were actually talking to the girls, so I had free reign and no competition flirting and cutting my teeth on male-female relationships.
There were also plenty of opportunities to learn to deal with bullies and stuff. I even look back on those fondly. ("Cool-kid" bully once sucker-punched me straight in the jaw as hard as he could in front of a bunch of people, and instead of reacting how he wanted I just calmly looked at him like he'd tapped me on the shoulder said "Can I help you, Travis?". He backed down in a hurry.)
I don't know man, but I loved middle school. I just hated how I was treated by my parents, but I didn't realize until later that they had a lot of unresolved mental health problems, and that it wasn't my fault.
Also, I don't look fondly on the random boners. I had to wear suit pants all the time for band performances and let me tell you, those don't hide anything.
Weirdly I relate to some of your experiences in a lot of ways.
- Middle school was really the only time in my life i had the free time to learn instruments. I played a lot of guitar and even played with friends. Never had the time after.
- Morrowind. I loved this game even though I was too young to really know what I was doing.
- My passion for math and science was ignited at this time which led me on the great path of focusing on math/physic in High school. Double majoring CS math in College and programming today.
- Was able to compete in chess tournaments regularly, never have had time since.
Socially, I had some friends, but they were nerds too. Honestly I'm glad I wasn't "popular". The kids I know who were became just boring popular people who started drinking and doing drugs way too early, obsessing about sports that they'll never play again, and never advanced their lives in fulfilling ways (in my opinion, though i think getting distracted by over socializing early in school [ie partying] distracts one from the good grades/drive needed to achieve good a good career).
Being popular and good at sports in middle school is a curse! Nerds ftw!!
It seemed like it was an interesting mid-point between elementary and high school: they start giving you some real extracurricular activities and electives and such to start exploring, but you don't yet have the highschool pressures of more difficult classes and preparation for college. Maybe that sweet spot is why it's a renaissance for some people.
It's even analogous to college, a midpoint between grade school and adult life; a sudden increase in experiences without a proportionate increase in responsibilities.
Up through 5th grade I felt self-sufficient, powered by an internal radiant contentment and warmth. I was reading Orson Scott Card and Eoin Colfer, watching Code Lyoko, learning PHP/MySQL, world-building in my imagination. I had a rich internal life and just wasn't that interested in my classmates.
At the onset of middle school, social/emotional needs appeared out of nowhere, all at once. It was like getting hit by a truck.
I tend to think that's just growing up, but an it's an interesting thought that the institution plays a role.
That’s awesome—for me it was pretty much the opposite. I spent middle school hanging out with the ‘popular kids’ despite really having nothing in common with them. While I was more or less accepted, I pretended to be someone I wasn’t and it was miserable. All my energy went into trying to fit in and improve my status instead of anything fulfilling or useful. Thankfully by high school I realized I was way happier being my real self with other nerds. Looking back, I admire the kids like you that knew who they were and never succumbed to that pressure.
I wouldn't say I had some sort of enlightened perspective; I really wanted to fit in with the cool kids, it's more just that I'd dealt with rejection for so long that in some ways I'd kind of given up/I didn't have enough social skills to even know how to change that. It didn't even have much to do with my interests; there were people around that I had things in common with, some of whom I became acquainted with, but I just didn't really know how to make real friends.
Put differently: I felt like a pariah until the very tail end of high school; it just happened that in middle school I had several unrelated good things happening too.
Middle school is hard because it's the point at which parents are cut out of the educational system, either by virtue of their not being able to be helpful (e.g., they can't do algebra or speak French either!), or by the child (through mis-directed rebellion or overzealous DIYishness).
At some point, parents have to be cut out. A child wanting to handle things more independently from parents is not a bad thing - learning to do it independently is important. What you call "mis-directed rebellion or overzealous DIYishness" is them reaching developmental milestones.
A school system that requires extensive parental help is bad system.
You’re right, of course, but ImaTiger wasn’t saying that parents need to be there forever, just (I think) partly (and, I think, correctly) answering the question of why MS is hard. Some things that are good for you are hard.
>A school system that requires extensive parental help is bad system.
Although I think I agree with the thrust of this (children need independence), I suspect the original intent was not so much direct help as cultivating an environment conducive to independent success. Like the difference between trying to grow a flower and trying to build a flower.
Of course, children eventually also need to be able to do this independently, but speaking for myself at least I didn't really appreciate this facet of education (nor was I in a position to do it for myself) in middle school.
Most 7-12 grade teachers I know would be much happier if the parents weren't involved at all in the kids education. All of the dozen or so secondary teachers I've talked to who left the educational field gave the exact same reason: "The parents."
An observable consequence of such dependencies is the degree to which income and academic achievement are "inherited", in the sense that kids with richer or better educated parents have more than a leg up.
On the one hand it sounds great to let parents participate in their children's academic education, but in reality such participation is a hard requirement for success.
And that, in turn, disadvantages students with working parents, or with parents that don't have the skill or experience to guide them to higher achievement.
It may sound awful to trust "the state" to handle education independently, but the alternatives are usually worse.
One of the most important epiphanies in my life was realizing that some parents don't care at all about their kids, some are jealous of them and actively sabotage them and that some systematically abuse them for entertainment.
It is also why I'm get angry when people push others to have children; many people should not raise children.
And in many cases, parents are fully aware the homework that requires their help did not had to be at all and has zero educational value. Parents know said homework exists only to force them to "be involved" and resent it. As much as you try to pretend you are enthusiastic yadda yadda, the afternoon evening was killed with crappy project that really does not look like having educational value.
This claim is way too general. I do not know your definition of success or higher achievement, but I'd say I was quite successful with zero involvement from my parents and saw numerous cases of the same.
If the state is going to be inserting itself, I'd rather the state stay away from Harrison Bergeron forcing rich people to be less educated and productive, and focus on taxing excess wealth to redistribute to children and poor adults who want to work.
What if public school is awful, and the only reason it looks decent is that some parents are picking up the slack? What would happen if you cut those parents out of the system?
People who have been out of the school system for a while should watch Bo Burnham's "Eighth Grade". It's an incredibly accurate take on what being in middle school is like, especially today where your self-worth can fluctuate based on the amount of likes your last Instagram post got.
Most kids in middle school don't have careers, property, deep responsibilities, or most other things adults focus on. They just have phones, a handful of friends, and some sort of position in an arbitrary social hierarchy, and so they put most of their focus into getting social approval. Grades matter only to the extent that they get social approval from adults.
Telling a middle schooler to just quit social media is like telling an adult in a capitalist society to just not worry about money. It isn't that easy to opt-out of the thing most of your world is based on.
Popularity has always been important. Social media makes it slightly easier to quantify, but it was always there. Deleting an account does not make popularity less important.
Yeah it was pretty similar for me. Unfortunately, there were times in middle school, where I was the bully as well. Once I got to high school though, everyone was mostly cool, never had any of the issues I had in the past years.
Bullying was not prevalent in my school. But I did notice an abrupt change from elementary school. Before middle school grades were meaningless. Middle school was when kids started to be grouped into advanced and not advanced groups and your grades started to matter (not really but it felt like they did at the time). A large problem for me was the sudden collective understanding from kids and parents that most of them weren’t as special, smart, or talented as they thought. Middle school was the first time kids had to internalize that they were not particularly good at things and likely never would be.
Agreed. I remember waiting outside a middle school, for my son's elementary-school orchestra practice to end (they met at the middle school). Every middle school student that walked by, had a recognizable emotional/psychological problem. Tics, staring at the ground and not looking anyone in the eye, startling at the approach of other students, and on and on. It was shocking.
Apart from the US, where else has middle schools? Here in Scotland there is (Optionally) nursery, primary school (5-12) and then secondary school (12-16/18), no middle.
In France we have them. There's "école primaire" from 6 to 10 (5 years), "collège" from 11 to 14 (4 years) and "lycée" from 15 to 17 (3 years).
Anecdotally, most people I spoke to felt that middle school years were the hardest: figuring themselves out, low popularity but high-stakes social games. High school was somewhat easier, people have found their cliques and the pressure from the harder work and longer hours left less time to play social games.
Off-topic but I have to get it off my chest: the years from middle school onwards have the dumbest names in France. They're named by counting backwards to the end of high school. So you start at "sixième" (sixth), go up to "cinquième" (fifth)... all the way to "première" (first), which is the before-last year! The last year is, of course, "terminale" (last, as in 'last in a series'). I'd love to convert to a sane naming scheme.
That's similar to the ranking of cadets in US service academies. Think of it not as progressing through grades, but rising through ranks: 4th class, 3rd, 2nd, and finally 1st class.
In Germany it's worse. We don't have a distinct middle school as such, but we have three parallel tiers after four years of elementary school. One is only until grade 9, one until grade 10, the third is up to 13 years.
I'm leaving out a lot of details here, but basically students have to choose one track after elementary school. And upgrading is hard, especially because the lower tracks are "optimized for slower learners". Side-Note: As you might have guessed, the track selection has become more and more based on ethnicity.
Studies have shown that such a tracked system is worse in every imaginable way. But it is extremely attractive to conservative academics.
After a long discussion with little alternatives, my little cousin went to a Realschule mit Förderstufe. The problem with the school has less to do with ethnicity as i can see it but the fact that large parts of her class dont speak German good enough to be educated in it. And that they are not grouped up by language to help them catch up in their first language. Pair that with the "slower learner" approach and all of those kids are simply left behind. I dont think its an issue of racism but simply abandoning anyone who, for what ever reason, cant hold the pace. Simply no parent wants their kid to be in such a class with two multilingual teachers to at least partially cover multiple languages to try to communicate with the kids in their class. They have to deal with the consequences of not thought trough political maneuvers. And the kids who suffer from that are generally those that already live in precarious situations. Painting it as a problem of racism, misses the point entirely from what i have seen and I think framing it this way is deeply counterproductive when it comes to these fundamental issues of our education system.
Studies actually have not shown that segregation is bad in every imaginable way. It really depends on what you want to optimize for. Segregation is excellent for letting intelligent kids reach their full potential. It's terribly for helping the children that struggle most.
- 6 years of Gymnasium (where one earns the possibility to go to Uni)
Though it is quite normal to upgrade from Sek to Gymi 2 years in.
The first two options are then followed by an apprenticeship (3-4y) during or after which one can also earn the ability to go to Uni, with some limitations. These limitations can be removed by upgrading that piece of paper, which takes a year.
Complicated and I’m sure I forgot a few things. Point is that there are many paths and upgrading is quite possible.
Also having a large part of the population trained in a trade Is fantastic.
At least they can keep going to school after this system ends.
I know a bunch of people who either did Abitur (the requirement to study at a university) after going to Hauptschule or Realschule, or simply studied without Abitur, because the university simply made a test with them and lookd directly if they're smart enough.
I really liked the tracked system in the Netherlands. I feel like it really let the higher tier learn at a faster rate. Do you have links to the studies?
Finland's got them - you've got 6 years of elementary school (7-12), 3 years of middle school (12-15), and then 3 years of high school, vocational school, or "business" school (15-18). You've also got the mandatory conscription for men, which usually happens after high school.
In the ex Soviet countries its main school 9 yrs that is obligatory, then gymnasium for another 3 years that in theory voluntary but everyone does as it's also necessary for university etc.
Wat? In USSR a middle school was 7 years in 1922-1958 and 8 years since 1958 and that was called an incomplete middle grade. It was mandatory in towns and working camps. The complete grade was always 10 years.
Gymnasiums and lyceums differed from usual schools by having a altered program in some way. There always were schools which provided a complete middle grade.
There was also a specialized middle grade after completing both middle and vocational school and it covered the entrance barrier as well as a free pass of 1-2 years in higher education if it was on the same course.
You can have a "Realschulabschluss" in Germany after year 10 of school. So primary 1-4 middle school in 5-10 and upper secondary education 11-13. In practice most will however not go directly to one of those middle schools but have their secondary education from grade 5 to 13 in the same school ("Gymnasium"). "Realschule" is as such for people who know in grade 4 that they will not go for a higher education but learn a trade after year 10. However, i should add that the 3 way school System, there is also "Hauptschule" where you leave after grade 9, is deeply broken when it comes to acceptance of these people in the economy.
Yes, it is (or was) Hauptschule, Realschule and Gymnasium, but many states didn't have a Hauptschule or abolished it.
Now, you go to something like the Realschule and leave it after 9 years to get a Hauptschulabschluss (lowest leven of highschool "degree")
Also, while it sounds harsh that kids have to decide if they want to study with 18 when they're just 10 years old, it's possible to keep going to school after the 10 years of Realschule.
The "Förderstufe" was two years of education where I was put into courses of different difficults to see in which system (Hauptschule, Realschule or Gynasium) I would do better, allowing me to decide when I was 12 (normally you had to decide when you were 10)
Also, the "Fachoberschule" was two years I did after Realschule to get access to university.
So I never went to a Gymnasium and still got to study computer science in the end.
Many school districts in the US don't have middle schools. Elementary schools going up to 8th grade are fairly common as are combined Jr/Sr high schools (7-12 grade, occasionally 6-12 grade).
Some areas of the UK have them. (State schools in those areas anyway.) I believe as a deliberately modelled-on-America experiment some time ago that stuck in those locales but didn't expand.
6 years of shōgakkō [lit. "small school"], followed by 3 years of chūgaku [short for chūgakkō, lit. "middle school"], and then 3 years of kōkō [short for kōtōgakkō, lit. "advanced school"]. Years actually reset when you go from one school to another, so for example, nobody says "seventh grade" but rather "middle school first grade" [chūgaku ichi-nensei] (as a side note, I personally find such translations awkward and would always translate chūgaku ichi-nensei as "seventh grade").
Interestingly enough, while chūgaku literally means "middle school", it's more analogous to the American junior high model because it's years 7-9 (but again, nobody calls them that) and not 6-8 (and as such I prefer to translate chūgaku as "junior high school", though part of that is informed by growing up in a part of the US that uses the junior high model so translating it as such has more verisimilitude to me).
In canada, its common in a lot of places, but not universal. When I was growing up, we had K-8 in one school, and then 9-12 as high school, although I think my home town now has a middle school system.
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I used to think the difficulty was due to the onset of adolescence but I think if you forced most working adults through such a transition for a year they would not fare well. This is why most people hate service jobs.
But how much of that might be structural?
Under ideal circumstances, a K-5 student has one teacher each year, in a class largely composed of students they were in a class with the previous year.
We throw them into 6th grade, now they have what, 5-6 teachers for 40-50 minutes each? In my district, two elementary schools feed each middle, so their grade size has doubled and even many of the students they shared an elementary school with will be unfamiliar.
That's a whole lot of social upheaval to subject 11 y/o kids to. Puberty is just icing on the cake.
By example: Teachers A, B, C, D, E, and F were teachers of that grade. Classes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 were classes of that grade. Before lunch the teacher+class pairings were A1, B2, C3, D4, E5, F6. After lunch the pairings were A2, B3, C1, D5, E6, F4. After a break the pairings were A3, B1, C2, D6, E4, F5.
This allowed us to get used to the idea of rotating teachers and we interacted with the other classes in our group a bit during rotations and breaks. However, it only raised the number of teachers to interact with by two, and we didn't actually sit and learn with a larger class. It made for a great transition.
That school had a bunch of other really great opportunities to start giving children more responsibilities, too. It had an inter-school mail system run by the students, as well as a bookstore, snack stand, and a few other things. For context, this was in the USA in the early 2000s.
Same as interacting with coworkers. And in management, really.
I don't think the transition to more separate specialized classes is a big part of it. It's mostly hormones and their brain powering up the social reasoning facilities and emotions without yet having the life experience to manage those feelings.
Middle school is right around the time that your social status and reputation — your image in the eyes of your peers — becomes an important part of your sense of self and self worth. But that status and reputation is heavily influenced by everyone around you. It's like all of a sudden these kids all wake up with giant targets floating above their heads and rocks in their hands.
By high school, they will have internalized some of the norms around how to not use the weapons they have — in large part because of their experiences now — but middle school is a time of experimentation and mistake-making, so there ends up being a lot of random collateral emotional damage.
This made an easier transition to high school, which had the full (6 to 8) different teachers and classrooms. There we had 3 different classrooms and 4 different teachers.
Based on my experience, nothing quite kills the joy for exploration and learning like school. It's brainwashing training: teaching you to uncritically accept facts from authority figures. This is probably most evident in propagandist history courses which carefully omit any inconvenient details.
I thought I hated Math till I got to university. I had to take a bunch of remedial courses on high school level math but ultimately ended up with a math minor in addition to my CS major because I enjoyed the subject so much.
The K-12 school system is fundamentally broken but I don't know what the solution is.
At the end of the day, it is rich to hear from politicians who have literally never attended a public school about how we should send our kids to schools they've avoided. A greater proportion of public educators send their own kids to private schools than the general public, by a long shot.
The most predictive stat for educational attainment is household income and parental educational attainment, so if you want to fix education, you need to fix income inequality.
I'm not from the US and I'm unfamiliar with the concept of charter schools. If I understand Wikipedia correctly, these are privately owned and operated schools which receive public funding, is that right? If so, in which way would they help or improve any of the hardships associated with Middle School?
- Middle school band introduced me to music - both listening and playing - which was life-changing for me. Band remained the best thing in my life through the rest of gradeschool, and music still is.
- I learned to play guitar for the first time, joining a wonderful freeform after-school club for it
- I discovered Tolkien, JRPGs, and Morrowind (and their respective music), all of which seeded my imaginative life in ways that are still felt today
- I tried programming for the first time (over a summer), awakening another passion and putting me on a trajectory for my future career
Socially, middle-school was rough. But that was true for pretty much all of grade school. And inwardly, middle school was amazing. I still look back on it fondly.
I got to do so many cool extracurricular activities, and finally had enough know-how to start teaching myself stuff.
I learned to play chess from a high ranked player, I started teaching myself python, I learned 3D drafting basics, played soccer, learned to skate, etc etc.
I was finally given enough leash to do those things, and to hangout with friends outside of school, including overnight.
I got to go on soccer trips and stuff with my traveling team. My parents never went on those trips so I'd always be driven/housed by someone else and got to see what normal people were actually like.
I finally realized how off my parents were, and how verbally and emotionally abusive and unfair they could be, so I started seeking out extracurriculars at every opportunity which was awesome.
For some reason, hardly any of the guys were actually talking to the girls, so I had free reign and no competition flirting and cutting my teeth on male-female relationships.
There were also plenty of opportunities to learn to deal with bullies and stuff. I even look back on those fondly. ("Cool-kid" bully once sucker-punched me straight in the jaw as hard as he could in front of a bunch of people, and instead of reacting how he wanted I just calmly looked at him like he'd tapped me on the shoulder said "Can I help you, Travis?". He backed down in a hurry.)
I don't know man, but I loved middle school. I just hated how I was treated by my parents, but I didn't realize until later that they had a lot of unresolved mental health problems, and that it wasn't my fault.
Also, I don't look fondly on the random boners. I had to wear suit pants all the time for band performances and let me tell you, those don't hide anything.
- Middle school was really the only time in my life i had the free time to learn instruments. I played a lot of guitar and even played with friends. Never had the time after.
- Morrowind. I loved this game even though I was too young to really know what I was doing.
- My passion for math and science was ignited at this time which led me on the great path of focusing on math/physic in High school. Double majoring CS math in College and programming today.
- Was able to compete in chess tournaments regularly, never have had time since.
Socially, I had some friends, but they were nerds too. Honestly I'm glad I wasn't "popular". The kids I know who were became just boring popular people who started drinking and doing drugs way too early, obsessing about sports that they'll never play again, and never advanced their lives in fulfilling ways (in my opinion, though i think getting distracted by over socializing early in school [ie partying] distracts one from the good grades/drive needed to achieve good a good career).
Being popular and good at sports in middle school is a curse! Nerds ftw!!
It's even analogous to college, a midpoint between grade school and adult life; a sudden increase in experiences without a proportionate increase in responsibilities.
At the onset of middle school, social/emotional needs appeared out of nowhere, all at once. It was like getting hit by a truck.
I tend to think that's just growing up, but an it's an interesting thought that the institution plays a role.
Put differently: I felt like a pariah until the very tail end of high school; it just happened that in middle school I had several unrelated good things happening too.
A school system that requires extensive parental help is bad system.
Although I think I agree with the thrust of this (children need independence), I suspect the original intent was not so much direct help as cultivating an environment conducive to independent success. Like the difference between trying to grow a flower and trying to build a flower.
Of course, children eventually also need to be able to do this independently, but speaking for myself at least I didn't really appreciate this facet of education (nor was I in a position to do it for myself) in middle school.
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And that, in turn, disadvantages students with working parents, or with parents that don't have the skill or experience to guide them to higher achievement.
It may sound awful to trust "the state" to handle education independently, but the alternatives are usually worse.
One of the most important epiphanies in my life was realizing that some parents don't care at all about their kids, some are jealous of them and actively sabotage them and that some systematically abuse them for entertainment.
It is also why I'm get angry when people push others to have children; many people should not raise children.
What if public school is awful, and the only reason it looks decent is that some parents are picking up the slack? What would happen if you cut those parents out of the system?
Simple solution: delete your Instagram account.
Telling a middle schooler to just quit social media is like telling an adult in a capitalist society to just not worry about money. It isn't that easy to opt-out of the thing most of your world is based on.
Off-topic but I have to get it off my chest: the years from middle school onwards have the dumbest names in France. They're named by counting backwards to the end of high school. So you start at "sixième" (sixth), go up to "cinquième" (fifth)... all the way to "première" (first), which is the before-last year! The last year is, of course, "terminale" (last, as in 'last in a series'). I'd love to convert to a sane naming scheme.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Military_Academy...
I'm leaving out a lot of details here, but basically students have to choose one track after elementary school. And upgrading is hard, especially because the lower tracks are "optimized for slower learners". Side-Note: As you might have guessed, the track selection has become more and more based on ethnicity.
Studies have shown that such a tracked system is worse in every imaginable way. But it is extremely attractive to conservative academics.
Years 1-6 are for everyone. Then either:
- 3 years of Realschule
- 3 years of Sekundarschule
- 6 years of Gymnasium (where one earns the possibility to go to Uni)
Though it is quite normal to upgrade from Sek to Gymi 2 years in.
The first two options are then followed by an apprenticeship (3-4y) during or after which one can also earn the ability to go to Uni, with some limitations. These limitations can be removed by upgrading that piece of paper, which takes a year.
Complicated and I’m sure I forgot a few things. Point is that there are many paths and upgrading is quite possible.
Also having a large part of the population trained in a trade Is fantastic.
I know a bunch of people who either did Abitur (the requirement to study at a university) after going to Hauptschule or Realschule, or simply studied without Abitur, because the university simply made a test with them and lookd directly if they're smart enough.
Gymnasiums and lyceums differed from usual schools by having a altered program in some way. There always were schools which provided a complete middle grade.
There was also a specialized middle grade after completing both middle and vocational school and it covered the entrance barrier as well as a free pass of 1-2 years in higher education if it was on the same course.
Most people don't go to university nor gymnasium in ex Soviet countries. It might have been among your social circles, but not everyone does it.
Doubtful that "everyone does" as not "everyone" in USSR went to university (nor anywhere else in the world, for that matter).
Now, you go to something like the Realschule and leave it after 9 years to get a Hauptschulabschluss (lowest leven of highschool "degree")
Also, while it sounds harsh that kids have to decide if they want to study with 18 when they're just 10 years old, it's possible to keep going to school after the 10 years of Realschule.
The normal ways could look like this:
Elementary School(1-4) -> Gynmasium(5-13) -> University(14-...)
or like that:
Elementary School(1-4) -> Realschule(5-10) -> Apprenticeship(11-13)
But there are many different variations of that.
I, for example, did it like that:
Elementary School(1-4) -> Förderstufe(5-6) -> Realschule(7-10) -> Fachoberschule(11-12) -> University(13-17)
The "Förderstufe" was two years of education where I was put into courses of different difficults to see in which system (Hauptschule, Realschule or Gynasium) I would do better, allowing me to decide when I was 12 (normally you had to decide when you were 10)
Also, the "Fachoberschule" was two years I did after Realschule to get access to university.
So I never went to a Gymnasium and still got to study computer science in the end.
6 years of shōgakkō [lit. "small school"], followed by 3 years of chūgaku [short for chūgakkō, lit. "middle school"], and then 3 years of kōkō [short for kōtōgakkō, lit. "advanced school"]. Years actually reset when you go from one school to another, so for example, nobody says "seventh grade" but rather "middle school first grade" [chūgaku ichi-nensei] (as a side note, I personally find such translations awkward and would always translate chūgaku ichi-nensei as "seventh grade").
Interestingly enough, while chūgaku literally means "middle school", it's more analogous to the American junior high model because it's years 7-9 (but again, nobody calls them that) and not 6-8 (and as such I prefer to translate chūgaku as "junior high school", though part of that is informed by growing up in a part of the US that uses the junior high model so translating it as such has more verisimilitude to me).
[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_school#The_three-tier_mo...