whats middle school?

17 comments

1. Based on a most cursory search, it appears you have a similar thing. The difference is you call it secondary school and the years might be just slightly different. (Looks like maybe grades 6-9? I’m not sure exactly how your years relate to our grades).

   It is roughly grade 6, 7, and 8. Young teenagers and tweens.

   Its just a transitionary stage between older teenagers and young elementary students.

2. Middle school is mostly synonymous with junior high school, which you guys do have in some states.

   Middle schools/junior highs cater to students who are in the intermediate, awkward age that they need a different format from younger elementary students but aren’t mature enough for high school level interactions.

3. It’s just what we call grades 6 through 8. There’s elementary school, then middle school, then high school.

4. It’s also called “junior high”. Typically the last couple years of primary education and the first year or two of secondary education.

5. You do have middle school, you just call it something different. Unless for some reason 10-14yo’s don’t go to school in Australia.

6. Do kids aged 10-13 go to school in Australia? Is it sometimes a different physical building than they went to when aged 6-9 or ages 14-18? (give or take a year on any of those)

7. Roughly speaking, it breaks out like this in my area of the US (Illinois)

   Elementary school: Year 1 – Year 5 (Ages 6 – 10)

   Middle School: Year 6 – Year 8 (Ages 11 – 13)

   High School: Year 9 – Year 12 (Ages 14 – 18)

   Depending on the school system sometimes Year 6 is in an Elementary school.

8. Middle school is often more of an informal term just kind of giving some sort of recognition that there is a maturity gap between it and the lower levels of elementary school, and academics might be a bit more serious. But in larger school districts you may see a specific building for it. [Here’s the local middle school in my area](https://goo.gl/maps/RMnpSkzqhQ79KcRK9). It has over 1,000 students in that building, and the nearby high school ([which recently went viral on TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/@carmeldeca/video/7197937009938156842))has over 6,000.

9. You go there between roughly ages 11-14 and it’s an intermediate stage between elementary and high school. Generally academics will start getting more serious around this time and you’ll go from having 1 teacher you stay with the whole day to going around to different classes for each subject. It’s mainly there because the tween/early teen years are in kind of an awkward spot where they’re too mature for elementary school but not mature enough for high school, so we have middle school to prepare people for HS while we wait for them to grow up.

10. In general, the US education system divides mandatory education into three phases, held in different school buildings:

    * Elementary (or “primary”) school = Kindergarten and 1st-5th grades (ages 5-11)
    * Middle (or “junior high” or “intermediate”) school = 6th-8th grades (ages 11-14)
    * High school = 9th-12th grades (ages 14-18)

    Of course, this can vary by state or by school district. Some have different cutoff points. Some have a two-stage system with combined junior/senior high or elementary/middle schools.

11. It’s the grades between elementary and high school. Grades 6-8.

12. While it can vary from place to place, the most common school break out is elementary school from Kindergarten – 5th grade, middle school for 6th-8th grades, high school for 9th-12th grades.

    In middle school, it’s kind of a transition between the other two schools… they’re not little kids any more but they’re not teenagers. Usually 6th-8th grades are like 11-14 in age.

    In terms of school structure, in elementary school there is a class with students who stay in that room pretty much all day (other than gym, art, etc) and their one teacher teaches them reading, math, social studies, science… all the academic subjects.

    Middle school is more of a transition to high school, more students than an elementary school but not as large as a high school. With teachers who specialized in one or two subjects, some moving room to room instead of staying in the same classroom all day, classes segmented by abilities. When I was in middle school, grades were broken into 2 teams, each with about 80 kids and 4 teachers. Each teacher taught a level of math but then there was a social studies teacher, a science teacher, two English teachers on the “team” and we moved mostly among their 4 rooms other than gym, art, foreign language.

    High school meant more tracks (regular, honors/AP) in most subjects, lots more moving around the building, classrooms/teachers grouped by subject vs. team/grade, choice in classes/teachers taken.

13. Hell.

14. It’s kind of a lawless penal colony where we quarantine young people of a certain age, whilst they undergo their horrific pupal stage. 11-13 year olds – nature’s cruelest jokes – are too adolescent to be mixed in with proper children, too childish to be thrown in with the pre-adults in high school, and intolerable to adults, their peers and themselves. Other approaches to this age group have been considered, but it’s considered “unethical” to put them in medically-induced comas for 2-3 years and just wait it out. So we nail a fancy sign that says “Woodlawn Middle School” or some shit on a free range insane asylum and toss them in there for a few years while they howl and mutate. Some of them learn a bit of geography and algebra while they’re in there, but frankly it’s considered a win if three o’clock rolls around and nobody is pregnant or bleeding arterially.

15. Middle school in my small towncurrently is 5th- 8th grade. About ages 10-13 years old.

    When I was a kid I went to what they called junior high which was only 7th and 8th grade.

16. From my understanding it’s usually grades 6-8.

17. It’s a transition between grade schools (small children) and high school (teenagers).

    Usually middle school is 5th to 8th grade — though where I went, it was 6th to 8th grade.

    Basically kids that are in the middle of puberty. Most people who have raised kids know that that’s a chaotic point in time. Certainly, I wouldn’t want my son (6) to be in school with pubescent children. But I also don’t want my kid to be in school with adults or near-adults when he’s 11.

    Middle school teachers are also particularly used to dealing with kids in this age group. And that’s a good thing.