The Junior High School

I

SCHOOLTEACHING is not unlike gold mining. The product of each is of unusual value, but the difficulties of getting it often seem insurmountable. Their methods also have many similarities, with comparable courses of development.

The forty-niners used notoriously crude equipment for mining gold. The rocker or cradle followed the miner’s pan, to be succeeded by the long tom, then by the sluice or riffle box, and later by ground sluicing or hydraulic mining. Large, successful mines to-day employ modern methods and equipment so efficient that it frequently pays to work the tailings of mines that were abandoned years ago when cruder methods were in vogue. But a visit to ‘the diggings’ in many parts of California to-day will often reveal the simple methods of the miner’s pan and the riffle box. All these devices relied upon two fundamental principles: the great specific gravity of gold and its affinity for mercury, implemented by a generous supply of clear water.

So it is with education. Side by side may be found, at the present time, the most refined methods and procedures known to educational experts and the cruder methods and devices of an earlier day. Both may exemplify in greater or less degree fundamental principles of teaching and learning. But the cruder methods discover only the nuggets and grosser particles of free gold, while the better procedures separate the finest gold particles from the slickens and the gravel, and even from the quartz.

In gold mining, the comparative ignorance of the farmers, storekeepers, blacksmiths, and diggers from a great miscellany of vocations made them easy marks for a plethora of fakes and useless devices which had inevitably to be abandoned for pick, shovel, and pan.

Likewise, fake and useless educational devices appear perennially, developed by those who are ignorant of the fundamental principles of teaching and learning, or by those who would delude their more credulous fellows. But progress is being made toward educational methods that are comparable in effectiveness to the methods of modem gold mining. Some schools are even working the ‘tailings’ that are all too frequently cast off by cruder procedures.

II

In many school systems, pupils are accepted into the secondary schools (grades seven to twelve) without question once they have reached the age of fourteen or such social and physiological maturity that they may benefit more by attending a junior high school than by remaining in the elementary school (grades one to six). Likewise, pupils are normally promoted from junior high school (grades seven to nine) to the senior high school (grades ten to twelve) because of their social and physiological maturity rather than because they have mastered prescribed subject matter.

Thus the high schools (junior and senior) have come to be filled by pupils in all stages of development who are of secondary-school age. Even the crippled and the blind and those whose eyesight is impaired have had special classes formed for them. Only those children are excluded whose mental development is so poor that they are incapable of profiting from the usual contacts of the school.

In many states, compulsory education to the age of eighteen precludes any noticeable drop-out before the tenth grade, and lack of opportunities for employment tempers the losses that might otherwise occur later. It is not uncommon, however, to permit those who can secure regular employment after the age of sixteen to attend school only a few hours each week.

As a result, the junior high schools contain virtually all the children of this school age, most of whom continue on into the senior high schools.

These and other factors, such as widespread insistence by employers on highschool graduation, have kept the secondary schools persistently and continually crowded. For example, all but one of the more than sixty high schools in Los Angeles have an enrollment greater than their normal capacity. Four new junior and three junior-senior high schools were opened this autumn without appreciably relieving the crowded condition of the other schools. During the past six years, the high-school population of Los Angeles has increased by more than nineteen thousand pupils, more pupils than are enrolled in the entire school system of many cities. This growth in secondary-school population is not peculiar to Los Angeles; it is merely illustrative of the growth that has occurred in public secondary schools throughout the nation.

In its early stages, the great democratic growth of public secondary-school population left the high-school faculties quite breathless, nonplussed, and a bit resentful. But once the inevitability of the situation was admitted, the innate humanity of teachers asserted itself. A search was begun for ways to alleviate the obvious suffering caused by imposing previously accepted academic standards upon untold numbers of pupils wholly unsuited to academic pursuits.

This charitable impulse was augmented by the findings of the newborn science of education and the convictions of ardent progressives. Without adequate preparation for thoughtful experimentation, educators were swept into a maelstrom of isms. For the nonce, the flood seems to have subsided a bit. Educators have been left somewhat out of breath, but sans much excess baggage, and willing to be piloted if a pilot can be found who knows the rocks and reefs and can steer for clear water.

III

With better vision, it becomes evident that some practices have apparently come to stay. Others are only the beginnings from which greater advances will have to follow.

In pupil-school relationships, tendencies may be seen to accept the pupil as a responsible partner in the teaching-learning process; to emphasize learning for the joy of learning or for the recognized usefulness of the knowledge taught; to make the school a place for wholesome adolescent living rather than a place where one is inoculated against the ills of adulthood; to focus the contributions of many fields of knowledge upon children’s obvious needs and endeavors rather than to teach factual material in isolation; and to make school control a purposeful and joint undertaking between student and faculty rather than merely a matter of suppression.

In school-home relationships, trends may be observed to accept the home into the triumvirate of child-homeschool; to recognize the child as a citizen of his community, particularly his school community, and, conversely, to recognize teachers as people, not merely as pedagogues or persons set apart; and to develop simplified marking systems tending toward less frequent but more thoughtful and meaningful reports to parents.

In school-community relationships, the apparent inclination is to make the school the ‘town house,’ the meeting place, of the community; and to postpone actual vocational education to the last two years before students may reasonably be expected to enter upon occupational life.

As a foundation for sound educational practice, intensive studies are being made of the needs of adolescents. The principal needs thus far identified are unquestionably accentuated during adolescence, although not wholly peculiar to this age.

Boys and girls need to grow in two important ways: their individual personality patterns should be permitted to develop naturally, and they should learn to adjust themselves to others and to fulfill their social obligations.

They need adult recognition of their differing growth patterns and differing ways of attaining biological and social maturity. Young people attain maturity at decidedly varying age levels, a fact that fairly clamors for attention. Great differences may be observed between individuals of the same sex, but the most marked differences occur between the sexes. Junior-high-school girls are from one semester to a year ahead of boys in personality growth. They have two dominant interests — to grow into women and to make a satisfactory social adjustment to boys of their own level of maturity. On the other hand, junior-highschool boys are distinguished by only one strong interest — to grow into men.

During the age of adolescence, pupils are making rapid progress in the simultaneous development of mental abilities and emergence of physical characteristics. The need for a rhythmic alternation of rest and activity throughout the day is apparent. Prominent also, and in a sense touching all of the needs enumerated, is the urge to develop a worthy sense of selfhood — an integrated ego with unified, consistent behavior.

IV

It has often been said that one of the common practices which interfere most with the satisfaction of genuine child needs is the setting up of artificial standards as exemplified by school marks. The old, apparently very precise, percentage scale not infrequently set up an arbitrary passing mark of 70, and pupils were not infrequently failed who received marks of 69, or even 69½. More than twenty years ago, the writer studied physics in high school. The teacher announced at the end of the course that the term mark would be the final examination mark, plus ten points for those students who had turned in all of their problems. The writer was given an examination mark of 91, and he had turned in all of the problems. Obviously, the bonus of ten points would give an impossible mark of 101 under a system in which 100 represented perfection; and a compromise term mark of 97 was finally given. Thus an apparently exact system is now recognized as being most inexact, misleading, and arbitrary.

Nevertheless, pupils and parents expect, and have a right to expect, some accounting by the school. Los Angeles junior high schools have adopted a basic two-mark plan: ‘S,’ meaning ‘satisfactory achievement within the child’s native endowment and present development’; and ‘N,’ meaning ‘needs to improve, not achieving a reasonable expectancy for that child.’ Under this plan, a child of superior endowment may be loafing, but still do much better work than his fellows of lesser ability. But the children who are using to the full the one talent given them by their inheritance will receive ‘S’ and the lazy child ‘N.’ The ‘N’ mark is not, however, a substitute for former failure marks; the teacher may recommend that the pupil be promoted or that he repeat the course.

To these basic marks has been added a third mark, ‘R,’ meaning outstanding work. This mark is given, not with reference to the child’s endowment, but with respect to his success as judged by the standards teachers have established through their years of experience.

To these three marks the senior high schools have added a fourth, ‘C,’which qualifies for the Certificate of Completion, but not for the Diploma of Graduation. This distinction is mute testimony that many senior high schools do not yet recognize the fact that large numbers of pupils continue school because they must. They should be given opportunities within their powers, not subjected to an academic programme absurdly foreign to their capacities. Such being the case, the school has no right to stigmatize youngsters because they fail at something the good Lord never intended them to attempt.

The ‘R’ mark is derived from its senior-high-school definition, ‘College Recommendation.’ But junior high schools have been free these several years from the necessity of keeping a weather eye on the colleges — and even the senior high schools have been freed in large measure.

One result has been a tendency to shift strictly college-preparatory subject matter — notably algebra — into the senior high school. No doubt a threeyear mathematics sequence will soon develop in place of the present four-year — part junior, part senior high school — offering. A similar upward movement of the foreign languages in the near future is freely predicted.

Another result of the new freedom from college requirements has been a growing feeling that the junior high schools should make school a joyous place, purposeful for young adolescents and conducive to wholesome personality development. This goal has not, of course, been fully achieved, but fundamentals are emerging and interesting practices are developing.

V

To discern fundamentals is but one phase of successful pioneering. To translate them into successful practice is another.

At present, teachers are certain that the best learning comes from living rather than being taught about living; that the school must become a typical, albeit embryonic, community.

Some of the best teaching of to-day takes place in typical life activities of the school: publishing the school paper, preparing the programme for the closing exercises, beautifying the school, making a book for others to read, learning about the school itself, conducting studentbody affairs, and a host of others.

But not all learning takes place in group activities. Individually, children like to draw pictures, model vases, make block prints, carve figures from wood, repair automobiles, build tables, bake cakes, sew dresses, read books, write and tell stories, and many similar things.

A balance of group and individual activities that are life-enriching and purposeful for young adolescents makes of the modern school a vastly different place from the school of twenty years ago. A change that illustrates the transition from the school of subject-matterto-be-learned to the school that is a real-life community in miniature is the transformation of the two subjects of English and Social Studies into a new subject called Social Living.

English was once several subjects: grammar, literature, spelling, and penmanship. Other separate subjects were geography, civics, and history (of several varieties, especially American, English, mediæval, and modern). To these were added social and economic content, and the mixture was named Social Studies. More recently, in schools familiar to me, the English and Social Studies have been merged. The time (approximately one third of the school day) previously allotted to the two has been given to the new hybrid. It is now taught by one teacher instead of the former two. The chief practical arguments for the change were the need for teaching the pupil as a whole child rather than as a collection of compartments, the desirability of reducing the number of different teachers to whom a pupil must adjust under the departmental plan of teaching, and the good that would come from reducing the number of different pupil contacts for teachers, who would thus be able to know their pupils more intimately.

This new arrangement has given a new perspective. It has afforded the school an opportunity to be organized more nearly as a community. The Social Living class is the centre of the pupil’s school day; it is his home in which he learns as he lives, and from which he goes out into the school to take up the study of specializations: art, mathematics, shop work, homemaking, music, typewriting, and the like.

On entering junior high school, the pupils first learn about their new school in the Social Living group. They learn who is who, how the school is organized, and what opportunities there are for them — as members of their community and as students. The Social Living group may edit the school paper, or be the official dramatics group, or undertake other large-group activities. At the same time, the teacher of Social Living feels a responsibility for the pupils’ ability to read, to write, and to spell — in other words, to use the English language as a tool. He is also responsible for their acquaintance with history, geography, and other social-economic knowledge.

In a large junior high school, there are eight or ten such groups in each half grade. Some groups are capable of complex activities, such as those already mentioned. Other groups must be content with simpler undertakings and may, in fact, spend most of their time perfecting the tools of learning — especially reading — which they have not acquired in the grades. It is not at all uncommon to receive pupils into the seventh grade who have only fourth-, third-, or even second-grade reading ability. Teachers in the junior high school cannot complain, for it is better that these pupils progress with their natural social group than that they be retarded as in former days and acquire the inhibitions and quirks of character that go with frustration.

From the Social Living group, pupils go to a variety of more or less specialized activities: a period of physical recreation, shop (wood, electricity, auto, metal, drafting, or printing, sometimes agriculture), homemaking (foods or clothing), art, choral music, orchestra (classical or popular), mathematics, foreign language, science, and typewriting. At times some of these subjects are required of all pupils. In other grades, choices are permitted.

VI

Subject matter and its organization, as represented by Social Living and other subjects, offer one means of making the school a natural and joyous place for adolescents. Teaching methods present another means.

For years teachers were enamored of the idea of the socialized recitation. But its indiscriminate application has handicapped many a child. Child interest and child participation are important. Nevertheless, the contributions of psychology and the scientific study of best learning practices do not warrant universal use of the socialized recitation. Informal, large-group activities, such as those of the Social Living class, require group organization and relatively long periods of time for living together. A socialized procedure is appropriate. Subjects of a more or less drill character, such as typewriting, mathematics, and music, call for close organization and intensive application for comparatively short periods of time. To attempt to socialize such subjects is to mistake the purpose of socialization.

Assuming proper enlistment of the child in the learning process as a participant and responsible member, it appears unwise to allot the same length of period to the several school subjects without consideration of the character of the learning that should take place in each. Such considerations have led some schools to attempt to provide short periods of class work for some subjects and relatively long periods for the more informal large-group activities. Economy of time and efficiency of learning are gained thereby.

As was mentioned earlier, the child is considered a responsible member of the community, and discipline is not something that is imposed from without. For many pupils, this point of view is very difficult to understand, because they come from homes which are governed by adult-imposed control. A case in point is that of a mother and father who called upon the writer as principal of the school. The mother asked that her daughter, aged fourteen, be called in and frightened to the point of losing interest in boys. Why? Because mother had discovered the following letter in daughter’s purse and thought that daughter had done something terrible.

DEAR JOAN: —
I want to tell you why I have not been seeing you lately.
I don’t love you. That’s why I never kissed you.
I hope you will find someone who will be true to you.
You can give my pal, John, any message for me, for he knows.
I wish you all the luck in the world and hope you will find a boy friend who will be true to you.
DON

Inquiry revealed that Joan’s mother did not know any of her daughter’s friends — never met them, never talked about them with Joan, never invited them to her home. Joan had been arriving home an hour or an hour and a half after the close of school. But mother never thought of her being interested in boys, thought that she should be interested only in her studies. Mother would not even admit that she herself had ever been interested in boys when she was in school — perhaps she was afraid her husband would be jealous.

Mother was advised not to take the matter too seriously, never to let Joan know that her note had been discovered, and to try to win Joan’s confidence and become acquainted with her friends. Mother was also promised help by the school. The boy did not attend the same school, so little could be done as far as he was concerned — but then, he was not concerned any more, as he had declared his honorable intentions and withdrawn from the scene of action.

Discreet help was given by the Social Living teacher and the girls’ vice principal. Mother did not wholly reform, but continued efforts by the school wrought some change. Between home and school, Joan has found fairly normal opportunities for enjoyable associations with boys of her own social maturity.

VII

During the past twenty-five years, junior high schools have become widely established. Educators with a vision of better schools and with the hope that this new unit would free teachers from a stratified school system have been primarily instrumental in establishing this new school unit. Not every junior high school has justified the aspirations of these seekers for a new order. But good prospecting has been done. Even though some veins were soon exhausted and others were in dry canyons that could not be supplied with adequate water, rich deposits of pay dirt and thick veins of the mother lode have been found.