Well, I dunno, SD. Where I grew up it was junior high (grades 7-9) after grammer school, then three-year high school. It sucked. My nieces are both in middle school now (grades 6-8) and I can see that their reality is a lot different. Of course, they're in an upper middle-class suburb with very protective parents--but my junior high was right next to a university campus, so most of us were profs kids or had professional parents who had high expectations of us. The thing I found difficult is that the 14-year-olds can seriously bully a lot of the prepubescent 7th- and 8th-graders. I played sports, and the girls' teams didn't separate us out into grades like the boys teams, so I saw this on the field a lot--and in the hallways where younger guys were getting their asses kicked by 9th-grade thugs. 14-year-olds belong in high school. Plus, junior highs are just like small high schools with cheerleaders and pep rallies, crap like that--I'm under the impression that middle schools don't bother with that stuff. Plenty of time for that rah-rah bullshit in high school.
