Recent incidents of violence and disorder in public schools have focused attention on the need for school security measures to protect the overwhelming majority of students from the disruptive fewwho turn what should be a place of learning into a place of chaos and terror. Essentials as such measures are, they are of course one-sided in purpose. We must simultaneously work at improving the schools and the educational programs they offer.
There is much talk these days of school changes -- but little action. In the elementary schools there are thousands of teachers who would welcome the opportunity to receive training in "open classroom" methods -- but such training is available only to a handful. In the high school area, there should be at least one John Dewey-type school in each borough -- but the one we have, John Dewey High School in Brooklyn, is now threatened by overcrowding and by budget cuts which would destroy its unique program.
While most writers on education have concerned themselves largely with the elementary school scene -- convinced, as they are, that if children get a good start in elementary school, the rest of their education will fall into place - the high schools have recently come in for a greater share of attention. The one school division which has received almost no attention, despite the fact that it is the division with the longest history of difficulty, is the junior high or middle school.
The junior high schools have long suffered from staffing problems. Teachers who are "subject matter oriented" tend to prefer teaching their subjects at the highest level, the high school, while teachers who are "child oriented" tend to prefer the younger grades." As a result, junior high schools across the country are staffed by teachers who are waiting for an opportunity to go to one of the other two divisions.
Restructuring Is Urgently Needed
While some of the disorder in the junior high schools is due to the staffing problem, much of it must be attributed to the junior high structure itself:
First: Great insecurity is engendered when the elementary school students, accustomed to relating, for the most part, to a single teacher in a single classroom, are abruptly required to move to a new teacher in a new room every 42 minutes. The emphasis in current practice on the need for informal early childhood programs as a transition from the family to a more familiar classroom should have its counterpart in the junior high school, to. This school should be so structured as to provide a slower transition to the departmentalized high school.
Second: Great insecurity is engendered in the newly admitted junior high students who, in elementary school, related to only 29 other students in a class, but are now moving about in a huge building in the company of 1500 to 2000 students. Since it is unlikely that our present junior high school buildings will be scrapped, the schools should be reorganized into mini-schools, each small enough to permit teachers and students to get to know each other.
Third: The most difficult problem facing the junior high school is inherent in the fact that almost all of those students who enter the school without having learned to read, write or count, leave the school in the same state. The problem of the non-learner is most acute in the junior high school. In elementary school, the gap between where a student is and where he should be does not appear to be so great; in the high school, students who have not learned drop out. The junior high school is the only division where large gaps between pupil age and achievement exist under conditions of compulsory attendance.
Most junior high school students who have not learned in the four to six year schooling which came before no longer believe they can learn anything in school. The entire school context -- teachers, blackboards, classrooms, books - is for them a context of frustration and failure. These students typically withdraw into themselves (willing to leave others alone if they themselves are unchallenged) or violently lash out against all those around them.
With over half a century of junior high experience behind us, it is time for us to make a basic change. Those who have failed to learn in their first five years of schooling should not be forced to endure four more years of the same. Instead, radically new educational models must be developed or this group -- models which will give those who have not learned a second chance to learn, in a new environment which offers them new stimulation and new hope, with no reminders of past failure.