Junior High School Reorganization after a Half-Century: I. Growth and Status of Reorganization

Abstract

T Is now about a half-century since the establishment and operation of prototypes of the junior high school, and an appropriate point at which to take stock of the reorganization movement. Although it is only something over forty years since the establishment of three-year units in Columbus, Ohio, and in Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, there had been twoyear units and six-year high schools including Grades VII and VIII ten or more years earlier. Thus, the span of existence of reorganized schools may properly be considered as extending over a period of about fifty years. Advocacy of reorganization, to be sure, reaches back much further. His own long-time interest in the movement has prompted the present writer to undertake this inventory of the growth and status of the movement and a review of thinking regarding it and to consider the prospects of further reorganization. His book was one of the first two commercial publications' dealing exclusively with the new unit although a few noncommercial monographs were in print before it. A stock-taking seems desirable in view of a questioning attitude toward the movement in some quarters, which is reflected in occasional periodical articles appearing recently with captions like Has the Junior High School Kept Its Promise? and Has the Junior High School Made Good? and in consideration of similar questions from time to time at educational discussions here and there