How the Junior High School Came To Be - ASCD

[Pages:5]John H. Lounsbury

How the Junior High School Came To Be

Success has marked

the brief history the 1920'sthe juniorhigh school and its

of the junior high school. partnersin the reorganizationmovement were rapidly growing educational in

novations. In the 1930's the junior high

junior high schools. An

school, the senior high school, and the

combination junior-senior high school

becameacceptedmembersof the Ameri

can school family. By the close of the

1950's the separatejunior high school,

followed by the separate senior high

other3000 arecalledseniorhigh schools. school, had become the predominant

Today, less than 6000 schools remain as patternof secondaryschool organization

traditionalfour-yearhigh schools in 8-4 in the UnitedStates.Togethertheseinsti

systems. The reorganized secondary tutions enrolled 50 percent of the sec

schools, that is those that deviate from a ondary school population.

four-yearhigh school following an eight- The movement centeringaround the

year elementaryschool,now make up 76 juniorhigh school, though alreadyquite

percent of the 24,000 secondaryschools successful, is still a relatively young

and enroll 82 percentof the eleven mil movement. Yet the span of this inter

lion secondarypupils.'

mediate institution's existence is long

The movementto reorganizesecondary enough so that the history of the junior

educationhas certainlycome a lowngay high school movement can be viewed

since CharlesW. Eliot first suggestedthe with reasonableobjectivity.And it is ap

possibility of reorganizationin 1888. propriateto give some attentionto the

Between that date and 1909-1910, the institution'shistorical development, for

reorganizationmovement was confined our understandingof thperesent and our

primarilyto the talking stage. Then the vision for the futureareincompletewith

appearanceof a number of new inter out a knowledge of how and why the

mediate institutions moved reorganiza- juniorhigh school came to be.

tion into

the experimentalstage. During

John H. Lounsbury if Chairman, Division of Teacher Education, Georgia State College for Women, Milledgeville.

December 1960

145

Multiple Causes

Copyright ? 1960 by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. All rights reserved.

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