Four principles for reforming middle schools.

What happens to children when they reach the middle school years? Some "A" students begin to make "F's." Some rambunctious boys turn sullen. For too many of our youth, middle school leads to emotional, academic and social loss.

Although adults rarely remember early adolescence with fondness, it was not always so destructive. Why are young adolescents having more trouble now than in past generations? While society at large is partly to blame, the organizational behaviors within schools might very well contribute to the problem, especially at the middle school level. Educators tend to look for something wrong within individual young adolescents and their families, rather than considering a broader organizational problem.

At the middle school level, children run headlong into the hardened school culture, for which the adults in charge have designed a system that is predicated on maintaining order. Adults view their role as enforcing the rules and regulations of this system that they have painstakingly constructed. Unfortunately, maintaining this system leads to conflict. Adults become discomfited when students are not responsive to the system's rules. Students become frustrated because they believe that they are being overly managed for no good reason.

The girl who mourns her loss of self defines a dichotomy that young girls discover at the middle level. Although girls are beginning to sense their potential and define their hopes, the hardened middle school culture, at the same time, teaches them to be sensitive to others but ignore their own emotional needs. Girls learn they should not excel in class, but should let the boys take the lead. The girls learn to be charming without disclosing any depth.

Girls and boys of this age are at a defining moment in their lives. Schools should not emphasize conformity and unquestioning adherence to rules and regulations, under the guise of learning to be "responsible." Instead of trying to manage young adolescents by addressing the outward manifestations of their sometimes chaotic behavior, educators should strive to detect and capitalize on these students' innate and more natural order. All cultural systems tend to gravitate toward a level of self-organization. Schools can help young adolescents evolve by promoting this more natural method of organization.

The following four principles can help middle schools discover this spontaneous order.

Principle #1: Foster natural human development, rather than reacting to external superficial pressures. Most girls suffer a loss of self when they try to fit the system's mold. Those who feel they must reject the superimposed system often become runaways from the mainstream.

Boys confront the same crisis. Imagine a 13-year-old young man who is just beginning to realize his capacity for self-determination. Imagine that he is publicly reprimanded by a male science teacher, who tells the student, "Don't interrupt me; you're acting like a jerk." The young man has two choices. He can submit to an insulting demand and lose his budding, still tender sense of self determination, or he can follow his natural inclination to act even "jerkier."

Neither choice is agreeable. Young people know that when they are forced to choose between two equally unacceptable choices they risk losing themselves. The healthy, intact sense of self that is so visible in preschool and grade school children can be shattered in early adolescence. What can be done? Girls should be allowed to develop according to their natures. Boys need outlets where they can channel their self expression naturally. A rigid environment, where adult rules are prized more highly than young adolescents' more natural needs, only fosters confrontation.

Principle #2: Respond to individuals, rather than reacting to emerging situations.

The hardened school culture also shapes teachers' attitudes. As potentially volatile situations emerge, teachers will often cite allegiance to procedures, rather than responding to an individual's emotional needs.

What follows is a vignette from the real world of the middle years.

"Git the **** out' a my face," says one adolescent male. These words get him dispatched to the principal's office. To the principal's inquiries, he responds, "I hate this place and ever'body in it. I don't wan'a answer your questions."

Then the boy adds, "If I'm goin' to In-School Suspension, wat'cha waitin' for, jus' do it."

This boy is obviously hostile and angry. One can imagine the provocation for his exclamation - another student probably said to him, "What are you lookin' at, what's your problem?"

One can also imagine the adult intervention that led to the boy being immediately sent to the principal's office. An adult passerby hears the remark, feels it is inappropriate and chooses to pass off the student to the main office, where punishment can be determined. The student responds to this adult action with anger, which he then directs toward a remote third-party adult whom he does not know and will not accept. His verbal response is consistent with the treatment he feels the School has offered.

It is entirely possible, on the other hand, that the boy would not have been so angry if the adult passerby had initiated a conversation and shown concern. By asking, "Is something wrong? Can I help you? You seem upset," instead of, "You broke a rule; come with me," an adult may have defused the situation. Schools' reactions to students' inappropriate behavior is typically swift and uncomplicated. Adults need to interact with children in more complex ways, however.

Middle school leadership meetings are often the times when team leaders or the principal's advisory committee discusses the maintenance of "schooling" as we know it. A real scenario from one middle school serves as an example.

The meeting's agenda included the topic of students arriving late to school. The teachers vigorously sought answers to their own questions:

* Who is going to be responsible for keeping track of tardies?

* How many times can a student be late to class?

* What is the policy?

* What is the consequence?

After taking each question to its logical conclusion, the group haplessly became mired in an ocean of numbers, which then prompted a new series of questions:

* How many tardies does a student accumulate before a parent is contacted?

* Are they excused or unexcused?

* What defines tardy?

When the group got this far, they turned their focus to who should be the keeper of tardy tallies. When it became apparent that nobody wanted the responsibility, they ceased this line of questioning.

Only when they found themselves on the verge of agreeing that tardies would be marked as such five minutes before school even started did the group become embarrassed. Once they reconsidered the facts, they understood that they had found no emerging pattern of tardiness; therefore, no problem existed. Only six students at this school had troublesome attendance patterns. To eradicate the possibility of this unique event reoccurring, however, the group wanted to impose an order of their own making. They wanted not only to make their own rules, but also to apply them to all 640 students. Adults' need for imposed order was taking precedence over children's lack of need for such order. Of course, such rule making always requires teachers to devote their scarce free time to enforcing the rules.

The group attempted to impose an artificial order that, outwardly, would be plain and simple, and rather expedient. But the issues surrounding when and how students arrive at school are complex. "Plain and simple" does not allow for such human issues as homeless children who arrive at school by cab, students who share their time between divorced parents, and children who are cared for by a number of relatives. At this age, students often have to rely on adults to get them to school.

A more natural approach would be to identify habitually tardy students on a case-by-case basis. A teacher or other school professional could address students' unique circumstances and decide whether punishment is necessary. This flexibility, by allowing for self organization, is congruent with a vision of a child-centered middle school.

By contrast, almost every middle school communicates to students that schools are places where adults make superficial rules that impose a teacher's agenda on a child's natural world. Most children like to please and will be on time most of the time. Most children will have real reasons for being late and need the time to explain it. We are too quick to tamper with what should be a natural way of viewing our school culture.

A natural human order displays itself daily at school if we are only wise enough to detect its subtle patterns. These subtle patterns of order may be termed "self organization" (Wheatley, 1992). Self organization does not mean that all guidance is thrown aside. The children do come underdeveloped, and some are even damaged. They do need help. Help must come in the form of support and guidance, however, not adult-oriented rules and regulations. By using natural ways, we use youth's natural strengths, rather than trying to regiment them into an imposed order. School's regimentation and imposed order is responsible for much of students' anger.

Principle #3: Overlook the outward symptoms of chaos to discover the underlying simple patterns of self organization.

Educators have to unlearn much of what they know if they are to see the natural human order that is evident at school. At the school cafeteria, for example, student interactions are natural in that actions are derived from each student's own individual need at the time. Without an adult's direct organization, students readily form a line. They locate a seat that suits them. When there is no more room at one table, a student will entice others to join him at a second table. Students do not leave the area unless they have a specific need.

Beyond the realm of their physical actions in this unstructured cafeteria environment, deeper patterns can be discovered. Like seeks like. All social behavior is acceptable, ranging from those who are rovers, to those who want to read quietly, and to those who gather their own social circle. Differences among these groups are accepted. All of this interaction takes place without an organizer. Within minutes of hitting the cafeteria door, even a large group of more than 250 teens can organize itself.

Some cafeteria supervisors assign students to specific seats. The supervisors walk between tables - not to interact informally with students, but rather to maintain a supervisory stance. They object to excessive noise, ignoring how noise can draw small groups of students together, rather than preventing communication. If truth be told, the supervisors are the only ones who have trouble tolerating the noise.

Interactions between adults and youth at school reveal a lot about the natural order of things and the imposition of artificial order. They also reveal much about why so many adolescents lose themselves at middle school, as they watch adults impose nonsensical order on top of their own natural order, which seems so sensible to them.

Educators have been taught to focus on the rational and technical features of any situation. They analyze, plan, change policies, restructure and reengineer. These sensible responses, while used successfully in business and the military, miss a deeper dimension - one that reveals a more natural, self-organizing and subtle pattern.

These self-organizing patterns are the same ones that scientists, looking beyond the micro order, have discovered in nature (Kauffman, 1993). Human order is not simple to explain, but it is natural. Educators can learn to trust the emergence of order in complex systems, such as in our middle schools.

Too often, educators tend to impose an artificial order rather than searching for this deeper dimension as a basis for interacting with young people. This artificial order stands as a shield between teachers and students and can quickly take the place of a more natural order.

Principle #4: Value human judgment and intuition rather than insisting solely on data and facts.

Many middle schools offer a reading and writing workshop that was designed by Nancy Atwell (Atwell, 1987). The purpose of the class is to immerse students in reading adolescent literature. The writing portion originally was based on teacher-student written dialogue called "literature logs." Let's take a peek at what goes on anywhere, really, in the United States. Imagine this scene:

The teacher is explaining to parents how the reading/writing workshop class operates. She says, "All students should try to read 1,000 pages per quarter. This averages out to about 25 pages per day. Books that have 300 words per page are worth 1.5 pages worth of credits per page. Books with large print are only worth .5 pages worth of credits per page."

A reading/writing workshop teacher is explaining to parents how the class operates. She says that students pick their own reading material, based on their individual interests and reading ability. As the students read, she confers with about four students per hour. They tell her about their books. From this discussion, she can judge whether or not the student is making good progress based on his learning profile.

The rules in the first example allow for only black or white, no gray. The teacher does not need to exercise judgment. Instead, she allows rules to substitute for professional judgment. In the second instance, the teacher uses a more natural, self-organizing methodology. This method may not be simple - in fact, it may be hard to explain. In this situation, complexity is natural; simplicity is the aberration.

Self Organization and Congruent Practices

With these four principles as a guide, educators can begin to examine their school culture and the ways they interact with young adolescents. As educators begin to reshape their own approach to middle school education, schools can begin to identify components that promote self organization. The chart below can help educators identify those practices that are congruent with self organization and those that are not.

Teachers may prefer a superficial order, but it comes with a price. While constructing this plain and simple school world, we have irretrievably lost the excitement of intellectual discovery, the search for insight and fascinating glimpses into new worlds. The rule-bound overlays amass grade level by grade level, until students who cannot rise above the organizational structure are almost irretrievably lost. Those who choose to subordinate themselves to it, lose a part of their soul. Those who rail against it are tomorrow's dropouts.

Comparison of Practices

Self-Organizing Principles       Adult-Dominated Practices

Integrated Learning              Departmentalization
Constructivist Curriculum        Content Specialization
Intrinsic Rewards                Extrinsic Motivators
Technology-rich Environment      Single Source Texts
Learning Style Accommodation     Verbal Emphasis
Multi-Modalities                 Lecture Modality
Collaboration                    Competition
Choice                           Teacher-directed Agenda
Absence of Conflict              Rule-bound Discipline
Emphasis on Learning             Emphasis on Schooling

Summary

As middle school educators pursue their reform agenda, we must pay attention to the consequences resulting from years of creating a school culture that rested upon coercion, competition and subservience. The four suggested principles for reform can help middle school environments become places where young adolescents develop responsibility for both schoolwork and behavior. They also can become places where educators value human judgment and foster natural human development, to the benefit of young adolescents, educators and our communities.

References

Atwell, N. (1987). In the middle: Writing, reading, and learning with adolescents. Upper Montclair, NJ: Boynton/Cook.

Kauffman, S. A. (1993). The origins of order: Self-organization and selection in evolution. New York: Oxford University Press.

Wheatley, M. J. (1992). Leadership and the new science: Learning about organization from an orderly universe. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Mary Louise Hawkins is President, Interact Inc., Florissant, Missouri. M. Dolores Graham is Director of Development, Ferguson-Florissant School, Florissant, Missouri.