Middle Man

                “Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you.”

                                                                                                 -Stuck in the Middle by Stealer Wheel

 

When I attended middle school, middle schools didn’t exist.  There were schools between elementary school and high school but back then they were called junior high schools.  At least where I was they were.  Perhaps back East or down South things were different, but here in the Big Valley there was no middle.  My school between elementary and high was grades seven through nine.  When I finally entered high school I strode through the gates as a sophomore.  There were about as many freshmen in Fresno as there were Fremen outside of the Dune books.

                Recently my younger boy had some trouble at his “middle” school.  He was being picked on by a bigger kid in gym class, and also the target of verbal bullying in the classroom by others.  He told his mother and me about the former but we were ignorant about the latter.  We told him to stand his ground and let this kid know, in no uncertain terms, that he wasn’t going to take it anymore.  His mother and he notified the vice-principal, the counselor, and the gym teacher about the first bully and after that the kid left him alone.  But I guess the boy who was leading the teasing in the classroom didn’t get the memo, because when that started up again one day, our boy decided he’d reached his limit and punches were thrown.  Three punches to be precise, all by my boy and all in the face of the other boy.  The results of this episode were; he got suspended for three days, the other kid came by a week later and apologized, his mother and I while not happy violence had occurred were happy he stood up for himself, and most of the people I’ve talked to have come to the agreement that middle school sucks.

                Maybe therein lies the problem.  Maybe it’s the “middle” in middle school that makes it what it is.  The Middle Child Syndrome suggests that older children are given more freedom while younger children are fawned over more, and given more attention if you will.  This can create a middle kid who grows resentful of those kids who came before and after, causing him to act out negatively; like climbing on the roof of Cedar Lanes Bowling Alley or spending so much time playing around an old abandoned milk truck near Chestnut and Weldon in Fresno that his parents come this close to calling the police when they’ve become convinced he’s been kidnapped.  Just to name a couple of completely random and generic possibilities.

Could the same behavior be happening in our school system?  Do high school kids have less restrictions and do elementary school kids enjoy more protection and attention than middle school kids?  Seems so.  Is middle school where those kids start feeling their wings and testing what they can and can’t get away with?  Yup.  The name “middle,” to me anyway, comes across as more of a dumping ground or holding cell than a place to transition from one school to another. 

In the naval services, officers are ranked as follows; ensign, lieutenant junior grade, lieutenant, lieutenant commander, commander, captain, and then a smattering of admirals.  Notice how one rank leads to the next.  You have to be a lieutenant junior grade before a lieutenant and a lieutenant commander before a commander.  It’s almost as if each rank is and encouragement to gain the next.  I particularly like the “junior” in lieutenant junior grade, as if they are saying, “You’re not a lieutenant yet but you’re on the right path.”

Why don’t we take a cue from our find naval services and switch middle schools back to junior high schools?  Instead of making kids feel like they are “stuck in the middle” as Stealer Wheel sang above, we instead tell them, “Hey you’re not in high school yet, but you’re on the right path.”