Quote:
Originally posted by sugar and spice
-Drugs and alcohol were MUCH more prevalent. In middle school I only knew one person who admitted to smoking pot. By the time I was in ninth grade, I knew a number of people who smoked up daily. Ditto alcohol -- almost none of the popular crowd drank in middle school, but by halfway through ninth grade almost all of them had tried it, and many of them drank regularly. A lot of that had to do with availability -- they might have smoked or drank more in middle school if they had had the access to it, but they didn't. If the school had been 7-12 it would have been much easier for them to acquire what they wanted. Like AGDee said, kids at 7-12 schools tend to start earlier on things like that.
- Sex was also much more prevalent. In middle school there was very little pressure but once you got to high school there was the knowledge that some of your 15-, 16-, 17-year-old friends and classmates were having sex and it became a much bigger issue. By high school EVERYTHING was about sex. Basically the same thing as the drug issue.
- High school teachers taught VERY differently than middle school teachers. Middle school teachers were pretty much just a couple steps above elementary school teachers. Most of my high school teachers basically treated us as if we were grown up. I can remember my first day of freshman biology and being shocked when my instructor swore in the middle of his lecture.
- In general the atmosphere was just much more INTENSE than middle school, academically, socially, culturally, everything. I would not have been prepared for it in seventh grade -- but I loved it and thrived in it in ninth.
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Also being in the education field, I agree with Sugar and Spice and some others. With the way society is going, I seriously doubt 6-8th graders need to be grouped with highschoolers. I remember when I was in high school, there were several male seniors who preyed on freshmen girls because they knew they wanted to be popular and accepted. I think students need to be kept in an age group that is conducive to their particular developmental stage.