Going to high school

was usually seen as the transition from childhood to adolescence in my kittenhood. My siblings and I started school in the year we had our fifth birthday and we expected to finish "primary" school in "grade seven". We then went off to high school.

Of course there were variations. I was barely four when I started school. My birthday is in December which meant that I could, according to the regulations of the day, start school in the February prior to that. Most families of course considered the issues, the date of the child's birthday, their maturity and other things.

I started school early because I could read. I was probably causing my mother more problems than I was aware of because I was constantly asking questions. The Senior Cat was bringing books home for me from the small country school in which he was teaching - often the same books over and over again because there was a limited range. I was already bored with Primer One and Primer Two and the adventures of Dick and Dora, Nip and Fluff bored me. It wasn't much better for my brother (birthday in January) who did start school almost twelve months later. He wasn't quite as interested in reading everything which came to hand but he wasn't far behind me. On the way through school I was "doubly promoted" once - I suspect to get me out of the way of those still learning to read and add one and one together. I was not a genius. I was simply curious. I was eleven rather than twelve when I went into "First Year" (now Year Eight).

Things changed. Instead of doing "Grade One" children started with "Prep". They spent more time in the "infant" or "junior primary" school as it became known. "Grades" became "Years". Students were a year older before they headed for high school - thirteen, rather than twelve.   

And all this was out of keeping with what was going on in other states. They were sending children to high school a year earlier. Their students were spending the same length of time at school but doing it in a different way. Arguments about whether the system should change were lengthy. To me these often seemed ridiculous. I looked at Year Seven students - often so much taller than I am that I feel ridiculous next to them - and knew they should have been somewhere else. At high school perhaps?

It is where they will be going this year. The system has changed. High school will start a year earlier, just as primary school will finish a year earlier.  It's a good thing in many ways. Children are now much more sophisticated than we were. They have to grow up much faster. They know about things we had never heard of and never considered. Racism, same sex relationships, global warming, refugees and the like would have been completely foreign to us. They were not discussed.  (As kittens though my siblings and I played with indigenous students. It was the natural thing to do.  We knew that the two men who lived next door in one place were somehow "together" although the law forbid it. We knew it was hot in summer and cold in winter but we didn't know about "air-conditioning". We knew people who had come from Europe after the war - probably more than most children because our paternal grandparents "sponsored" several families.)

But I think there has been a missed opportunity in all this. We could have had middle schools - schools which catered for children who are in that transition period between childhood and adulthood. The most senior students in high schools are now adults in many ways. Many of them drive cars. They have part time jobs. They worry about the future and employment in that future. Do those just coming out of primary school really need to start thinking about these things or should they be able to do a bit more growing  up in other ways? 

I know some people will disagree with the changes. It is easier to indoctrinate the young and very young. Many people believe that they should be taught to think in certain ways and hold certain beliefs about major issues.

Isn't it more important to just teach them to think?