Why Is Middle School So Hard for So Many People?

中学. The very memory of it prompts disgust. 有一件事是没有人会想到的:天哪，我真希望自己还是12岁时的样子. 中学 is the worst.

Tweenhood, which starts around age 9, is horrifying for a few reasons. For one, the body morphs in weird and scary ways. Certain parts expand faster than others, sometimes so fast that they cause literal growing pains; hair grows in awkward locations, often accompanied by awkward smells. 许多孩子面临着新的学校和一套新的行为规则，无论是在社交上还是在学业上.

But middle school doesn’t have to be like this. 可能没问题. It could be good, even. After all, middle schoolers are “kind of the best people on Earth,” 玛拉·克鲁兹说, the principal of Oyster-Adams Bilingual School, a public middle school in Washington, D.C.

中学应该拥有自己的教育生态系统的观念可以追溯到20世纪60年代, 开展一项运动，以更好地满足10至16岁儿童的特殊学习需求. The movement drew from the work of two psychologists, writes Phyllis Fagell in her new book, 中学很重要——这一运动的部分原因是为了消除中等年级学生的“简·布雷迪”综合症, and by the sense that they were overlooked as the middle child of the K–12 family, an afterthought or a means to an end.

Take the massive variation in grade figurations. Some middle schools are combined on a single campus with their elementary- or high-school peers; most are siloed institutions grouped into two, 三个, or four grades—or just one. 在中学开始一所新学校——这是许多学生的共同经历——可能是毁灭性的. 这在很大程度上是因为在这个年龄段，社交货币是多么重要——在一个陌生的校园里，和不熟悉的人一起上学，必然会颠覆孩子们现有的受欢迎程度.

A 2016 American Educational Research Association study of 90,000 students in New York City, 例如, 研究发现，一个人在六年级时的“佼佼者”地位具有最积极的学业和社会优势. And not only do kids at this age place a greater premium on popularity than their younger counterparts; they also benefit immensely from stability. A separate 2014 study of 6,000 K–8 students in small towns throughout Pennsylvania and Indiana found that starting a new school in the sixth or seventh grade can undermine kids’ motivation and confidence; those who didn’t have to transfer from their elementary school fared better.

最近, the psychologist Marisa Malone, a graduate student at the University of Virginia, 发现六年级和七年级分开上中学的学生比那些仍然和小学同学在一起的学生更不可能通过考试. The transition to a new school, she concludes in her September 2019 paper, 是否会因为在中间的几年里发生的不成比例的高欺负率和普遍的低自尊而加剧.

“They have this heightened need for autonomy, 然而突然之间，他们的生活受到了限制，他们的一举一动都受到了控制,” Fagell told me in a recent interview. 中学常常“把孩子当婴儿对待……把他们当作不能被信任去解决问题或领导的小孩子”——尽管中学生渴望有机会进步. 当中学不把学生当婴儿看待时，他们就像对待高中生一样对待他们, 不鼓励学生在学业上冒险，不给他们机会了解自己，而是把学生按成绩等级分类. Neither approach suits middle schoolers’ needs. 许多孩子也在这个时候失去了休息时间，这就抹掉了一个重要的身体释放和社会联系的机会.

任何一个13岁以上的人都可以告诉你，即使是最适应环境的中学生，在社交环境中穿行也很困难. “Most adolescent friendships are poor quality, defined not just by the presence of aggression, but by the lack of reciprocity,” Fagell writes in her book, citing research suggesting that kids’ best-friend lists change every two weeks. Classrooms with chair-desks arranged in fixed rows don’t help promote socializing. And middle schoolers end up feeling, as one seventh-grader Fagell interviewed put it, simultaneously “judged and ignored.”

That seventh grader may have a point. In the annals of education, middle school often is disregarded. Mary Beth Schaefer, an education scholar at St. John’s University, 从20世纪60年代开始的50年间，有没有研究过更好地容纳中学生的运动的进展. 谢弗讲述了一个时断时续的故事:改革中学的努力经常进入国家政策辩论, but those conversations always dissipated quickly, resulting in stagnation or even skepticism of the cause’s validity. 谢弗指出，从2010年到2013年，《e世博esball》每卷减少了近100页. And yet we know that middle school is a pivotal time for children, 谁的身体和智力在青春期早期比生命的头两年以外的任何阶段都发展得更快.

因此，成年人常常把中学视为记忆中的噩梦，这对他们没有帮助. “They tend to fear this precarious age range,” Cruz, the D.C. 校长说,. “(成年人)误解了那些年”，如今这一章的定义是发色情短信和自恋, poor critical thinking, 公民冷漠.

“Adults want to control,克鲁兹说. And that may be why grown-ups struggle to adequately serve middle schoolers, whom she describes as “consistently inconsistent.” Yet Cruz is optimistic that middle school could be great.

一个简单的解决办法:调整一下作息时间，这样中学生就可以在身体需要的时候满足他们不断增长的食欲. Cruz’s school, Oyster-Adams, decided to implement a 20-minute snack break at 10:45 a.m. 因此，学区现有的学校午餐(也为校园另一部分的低年级学生提供午餐)不会给她留下饿肚子的孩子. 另一项改变是:中学教室应该预算安装空调——当室内闷热时，孩子们的身体闻起来不舒服，也不舒服. 当然, 对一个群体有益的结构性变化，在另一个群体可能就没有意义了.

One common denominator across the middle-school crisis is a simple empathy deficit. “小孩子有成年人所有的感受——只是他们的世界经验少得多,克鲁兹说. 校长告诉我，校园其他地方的低年级学生的家长经常向她抱怨，当他们“送走我的无辜”时，中学生咒骂和傲慢, 小, tiny fourth-grader.” She addresses the issue, but when this happens she thinks to herself: denial. “Everybody struggles with [early adolescence],” she says. “It’s not like you can just skip that.她经常在公共场合注意到类似的态度——当成年人和中学生坐在一辆公共汽车上时, 例如, they often glare and shake their heads at the tweens, who if they’re in a group are very likely causing a ruckus. But those insolent preteens? “That’s gonna be your kid in a few years!” Cruz thinks to herself. Or: “I bet you acted kind of like that [in middle school], too.”

The middle-school movement has experienced somewhat of a resurgence in recent years. 为了使这些努力取得成功，成年人将不得不接受中学时代的混乱. Tweenhood is torturous, 照顾那些处于青春期的孩子可能会很痛苦和尴尬:青少年会犯很多错误, and they’ll learn from them, and still make more mistakes after that. 然而，正是这些错误——以及随之而来的成长——赋予了中学的意义.

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