The intermediate school: Whither education's ugly duckling?

Abstract

For fifty years some educators have looked unhappily at the unsettled territory between the elementary school and the senior high school. While the existence of thousands of junior high schools and middle schools attests to the absence of a literal vacuum, the roles these institutions are expected to play lack definition. Roots of difficulties associated with the intermediate school we may trace back as far as eighty-four years to recommendations by the 1893 Committee of Ten to create a special two-year school to bridge the gap between elementary and senior high school education. Because senior high schools of that era were viewed as college preparatory agencies, these proposed new schools principally would prepare youngsters to deal with the rigors of the senior high school program. Though several early intermediate schools were established to provide youngsters with programs less formally academic than the schools envisioned by the Committee of Ten, in time most fell victim to the impolitic decision to apply the termjunior high school to these new institutions. As new entities lacking a tradition and independent formulation of their function, many of these intermediate schools began more and more to adopt methods of organizing instructional programs and of handling students that paralleled closely practices of the senior high school. In addition to the lamentable decision to choose the term junior high school as a label for the new intermediate schools, the nature of teacher preparation program has had serious consequences for intermediate school education. At most colleges and universities teacher training programs divide into two broad categories, elementary and secondary. Typically elementary sections offer programs of interest to future teachers interested in working in grades K through 6, and secondary sections offer programs of interest to future teachers interested in working in grades 7 through 12. This arrangement has tended to lash together in a single program area teacher training for intermediate schools and for senior high schools. That the senior high school is clearly the superior partner in this marriage we can ascertain from examining secondary program offerings of nearly any teacher education institution. Courses directed toward enhancing future teachers' abilities to work effectively with eleven, twelve, thirteen,