This article, overall, really didn't convince me. It makes plenty of arguments as to why things are wrong in the "6-3-3" system but I wasn't sold that the way the grades are divided is the main issue. I went though a 5-3-4 system and guess what? I felt awkward in 6th grade, I felt awkward in 7th and the same for 8th. I think that no matter grades a middle school covers, its still going to be a strange and new time for the kids in it.
I think the main thing we know about what middle school kids go though is that their emotions and their actions are all over the place. Even more, there are always going to be kids developmentally ahead or behind their peers. Its too difficult of a task to perfect the middle school so I kind of see it as a non issue. I'm not saying we should stop trying to figure out how to help kids get though the hell that is middle school, I'm just saying we don't need to be having a debate over how to divide them.
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Interesting comment - I'd have to agree. I think that you're right that it's not necessarily so much about where the division of grade levels takes place and what we're going to call that middle level, but how we're going to teach kids differently and effectively at that level. If it is in fact where the division takes place, the article didn't really do a stellar job in explaining why. And I totally agree that when we're dealing with issues as large as those addressed in chapter 11, spending time debating over 6-3-3, 6-2-4, etc is kind of pointless.
ReplyDeleteGood call Simone. For all of the talk about being sensitive to individual kids, it doesn't take long for "experts" to debate over how to divide and group them. When are we going to concentrate on CONTENT and not semantics of age organization. We can't group them by abilities because that singles out the less effeicient kids, and we can't group them by age, so what is left? Is our final level of political correctness going to be 1 teacher per student? Let's get on with teaching students what they need to know to be succesful people and to be able to provide for themselves in the future.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your post as well. I would even go so far as to say that trying to create a middle school to fit the 'individual' students needs is completely contradictory. In middle school kids are trying to fit in, they are trying to find their group that they connect with and will morph into whatever is required to be a part of that group. Also, a perfect middle school is utopian, and to this date history has never been able to create a utopain anything.
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