
Middle School Misfortunes Then and Now, One Teacher’s Take - esaym
https://www.waituntil8th.org/blog/2018/11/12/middle-school-misfortunes-then-and-now-one-teachers-take
======
nine_k
Middle school is the age when social hierarchies start to form

For millennia, teenagers were included in complex parts of society, with kids
of different ages, and some adults around. They could learn, they could teach,
the could choose authority figures to imitate.

In a modern school, though, they are isolated for most of their day in a group
of 20-30 kids of same age. They can't build a natural hierarchy around
experience and abilities, for a wide enough gamut is not available. So they
end up building a hierarchy based mostly on aggression and persuasion. It of
course ends up pretty toxic.

~~~
yay_cloud2
Are there any structures that kids can get involved with (or the family) that
will provide some of "complex society" feel?

~~~
goodroot
Team sports. I grew up playing competitive hockey. I learned from a very young
age that I am not special, that the team is stronger than an individual, and
magic happens when everyone commits to their role.

I am grateful for this gift, and attribute to it much of my present success.

~~~
bsenftner
Team sports has too much 'coach as dictator' for non-competitive kids to
develop. They are left to pasture, literally. Only the star athletes receive
attention, then they bully the rest.

~~~
csa
This definitely happens, but that’s also a bad coach.

Good coaches will develop kids across the entire range of skill levels, and
will consistently give them tasks that they can succeed in (at least in
practice). In the US, most little league teams have “must-play” requirements,
so both coaches have to play their weakest players optimally.

~~~
yowlingcat
I think both are true. The must-play requirements are present, but they don't
stop certain things from happening -- things like the coach's kid from getting
the most playtime, attention and opportunities in game. I saw this happen
firsthand.

~~~
csa
Absolutely.

Then again, that person is probably a bad coach.

For anyone out there looking to give back to their community, learning how to
be a good youth sports coach is probably high on the list of value add. It’s
not easy, but you can have a positive impact on people that will last a
lifetime.

------
crescentfresh
Some of my 13yr old son's classmates have started a bullying campaign against
their _own teacher_ , trying to dig up dirt or otherwise gossip about her.
This happens over insta and snap.

My son isn't involved but as a result she wouldn't even meet with me to
discuss his recent report card (a right I thought I had), she is so sick and
tired of people ganging up on her.

I've always warned my son, you misuse or otherwise abuse a privilege in the
presence of adults and they will strip you of it, a phone is no different.
Then the more I tried to apply that to this situation I realized I'm wrong:
his peers have already learned to bully and harass outside of school now, the
teachers can do nothing about it.

I don't know what to do about this one.

~~~
AYBABTME
Probably she could sue the parents? idk how it works in the US but kids aren't
above the law, and their parents can't ignore illegal behaviour without
consequences.

~~~
marcoperaza
Being cruel and digging up dirt on people is wrong but not illegal.

~~~
S4M
Depending on what dirt was dug this could be called defamation which is
illegal.

------
masto
Middle school was the worst years of my life. It was absolute torture, the
bullying, the teachers' petty power trips, the pointless lull in actual
education before high school. Technology was my refuge. I passed the hours
just waiting to get access to a computer, and it wasn't until a few years
later that I finally got a modem and found BBSes where I could participate in
discussions with real people. It was fun, it saved me from I don't know what,
and it set me on a path that led to this place 25 years later.

I would have been so much better off with a cell phone.

~~~
negativez
It's easy to forget that BBSes were not at all populated by a representative
sample of all people. The communities you experienced were the norm there but
are a vanishingly small part of the modern internet. If you were raised now
you might never have found your way to one before your psychological
development was co-opted and sent in a very different direction by today's
social media offerings.

------
joefourier
The writer seems to be confusing 2008 for 1998. I remember middle school from
2008 onwards. Almost all teenagers were online by then (on MySpace, then
Facebook). Nothing prevented your father from checking emails on his
Blackberry at the breakfast table, your sister from texting on her cellphone
or playing games on her iPod.

Teachers had to ban cellphones in classrooms back then due the teenagers
texting or playing mobile games, and there were PSAs about being driven to
suicide by cyberbullying. By 2009 you could already obsess over Facebook likes
- before then, you could measure your popularity by the number of friends you
had versus how many your own friends had - and embarrassing photos could
easily end up shared online or circulating among the other students.

It may not have been as extreme as today, but an embarrassing video of
yourself could just as easily end up going viral online and leading to social
ridicule - see the Star Wars kid.

~~~
frosted-flakes
In my experience, the turning point was between 2008 and 2011.

I was in late elementary school in 2008 (grade 8), and I don't know if any of
my classmates had a cell phone. Yes, some people had Facebook, but I think it
had a minimum age limit of 15 years (?), and stuff like Instagram did not
exist. People still called each other on the telephone.

Fast forward 2–3 years into high school though, and everyone was on Facebook,
probably half of my classmates had BlackBerries (BBM was all the rage), and
some people had iPhones. A few kids had their own laptops that they brought to
school, but schoolwork was entirely paper-based. (Heck, I didn't have home
Internet access until after I graduated from high school, but I think I was in
the minority there.) Using your phone during class resulted in it being taken
away.

Now I look at my youngest siblings, and everything they do is online. They
submit homework through Google Classroom while browsing Instagram on the sly
(Facebook is for fudder dudders), and their phones are their lives. They don't
call people, and txt spk lk this is rly populr again for some reason. And
teachers encourage phone use during class for certain things.

~~~
Mirioron
I think the turning point might be regionally dependent. I know that social
media was already popular before 2008. It simply wasn't Facebook, but other
sites such as MySpace, Orkut etc.

~~~
frosted-flakes
I agree, to a certain extent. People were definitely on social media and used
online IM (plus stuff like YouTube and Runescape), but I think the hard
disconnect that occurs when you step away from the family PC is worlds away
from having a phone in your pocket. These days, we're always connected.

------
analyst74
After hearing enough of those kinds of stories, middle schools in America just
sounds like a really scary place to be. Growing up in China in the 90s, I
don't remember being scared all the time for being socially excluded and
bullied despite being a computer nerd.

After moving to US as adult, one thing I found really challenging is
navigating social environments. It is not until I started viewing it through
lenses of Hollywood school dramas, some of the social dynamics start to make
sense. I am amazed how stark the contrast is between being perceived as
"popular" as opposed to a nerd.

~~~
cr0sh
Yeah - I both keep tabs and help (mostly advice comments) to my neighbors on
Nextdoor.

I am constantly dismayed at not only the fact that many seem to have an
education somewhere at the high school level, but also that they still seem to
crave a ton of drama and other similar "schoolyard" socialization habits.

It would be humorous if it weren't for the fact that I live here with them;
but that was the choice I made - I deliberately chose to own an older home
that cost less than what I could afford, in a decidedly blue-collar
neighborhood with no HOA so I could work on my vehicles or do other "loud
fabrication activities" that I couldn't in another neighborhood.

Part of me, though, wishes I had taken the plunge and had a home built out in
the boonies.

For the most part, my neighbors are nice and thoughtful, but there's a certain
segment among them that I wish would just "grow up" already.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
I hate this!

I had a tough time in school. I had a teacher tell me how much she didn't like
me in 6th grade, and had few friends. The girl with the locker next to me
threatened physical violence from time to time, but it seemed she wasn't
willing to throw the first punch. We moved in 8th grade, where the new school
decided I was lesbian and didn't deserve to have friends. I ate alone most of
the year. (They were half right, but I didn't realize at the time).

I had hope this would go away when I got older. I was _promised_ this. Instead
what I found was that it was just as bad or worse lest you fit in and just do
the "adult" thing. It is now years later and I live in a different country. It
took that move to ever feel like I'm accepted by folks in general.

------
darkerside
This isn't going away. This is our society. So how do we deal with it? How
could Brian have dealt with it?

There's probably a "right" answer. I imagine something like, "leaning into"
the joke by posting a response, showing you can laugh at yourself. There are
PR firms that specialize at this sort of thing.

Some would say it's a shame that middle schoolers need to develop the skills
of a modern PR agency. I'd say, that's just what our society is now, and as
usual, (most) kids will deal with the changes much better than adults.

~~~
DelightOne
Collect phones at the start of school. Like France.

> Some would say it's a shame that middle schoolers need to develop the skills
> of a modern PR agency.

If teachers don't care yes.

~~~
saghm
> Collect phones at the start of school

While I don't disagree with this idea at all and think it would definitely
make the situation somewhat better, I also think it's naive to think that
bullying would go away if kids didn't have cell phones. My (admittedly
anecdotal) personal experience of middle school before smartphones and
Facebook and the like was that bullying was still a pretty common thing. While
taking phones away could stop one specific incident from being the source of
repeated bullying, bullies will still find a way to bully even if they aren't
able to keep permanent video records of various embarrassing incidents of
their targets.

That being said, I think there are additional arguments for not letting kids
use their phones during school hours, and I wouldn't see any problem with
enacting such a policy.

~~~
olyjohn
Yes but bullies coudln't send video of their actions to 1000 people at once
and get positive feedback from 400 of them within a few minutes. Their
audience was limited to whomever happened to be around, positive feedback from
an even smaller group, and the verbal rumor mill which wears out quickly. The
larger audience, and the anonymous group/mob encouragement is the
difference...

~~~
Mirioron
No. The small audience was good enough. Hell, sometimes there isn't any
audience when bullies bully people and they do it anyway. And the kid that's
being bullied is still an outcast in school, meaning that they don't have
friends. At least if they have a phone it's possible that they might get
positive interaction from people online since they don't get any from their
physical surroundings.

------
al2o3cr
An alternate take from the earlier time:

    
    
        Now it’s eighth grade and Mark has become addicted to
        making smaller kids afraid.  Sure, he needs a lot more
        ‘victims’ to get the same feeling, but that’s okay.
    

or

    
    
        Now it’s eighth grade and Mark has become addicted to
        alcohol.  Sure, he needs a lot more
        ‘drinks’ to get the same feeling, but that’s okay.
    

Pretending that "the old days" weren't full of kids doing whatever it took to
hit the dopamine joy-buzzer is stupid.

    
    
        Smartphones and social media have transformed students into
        creatures craving one thing: content.
    

The author's phone must be a truly remarkable device, what with being able to
mind-control people all on its own. Here in the real world, people have
transformed THEMSELVES into those creatures...

    
    
        Childhood is fleeting. It shouldn’t be spent staring at a screen.
    

It shouldn't be spent warehoused in a school either, but here we are.

~~~
negativez
No one is talking about the phone as a physical device. The "phone" is the
multibillion-dollar industry dedicated to indiscriminately making every human
spend every possible second of their day 'engaging' with media out of a simple
paperclip-maximizing business imperative.

This industry doesn't need to make users happy anymore than the tobacco
industry makes its own customers happy - as long as the dopamine is within
arm's reach they've got most people hooked so much more than tobacco ever
could. But unlike cigarettes, no one can cut open a slice of your social media
lungs and show you that your mind is covered in tar. And since no one dies
directly of exposure, we're left trying to convey how life could have been
better without the second-order effects of using the product. If your lungs
don't function with all that tar, you avoid physical activity because 'you
don't like exercise' (when you can't breathe anymore). And if your brain has
been trained to seek fulfillment from your phone that's because 'you like
using your phone more than doing other things' (when you can't think of
anything else you like to do anymore).

------
optimiz3
Be kind to others...fast forward 10 years and imagine some authority looking
into Mark's social media history. Yeah you may be a big alpha in middle
school, but you'll be labeled a bully and a social pariah the rest of your
life.

Heck, let's imagine advances in NLP and video processing where people
automatically get labeled as bullies. Being regarded as such could be the new
scarlet letter. The Internet doesn't forget.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

~~~
olyjohn
Unless Instagram is gone in 10 years. Does anybody go back and look at old
MySpace profiles? Are they even still around? Every single one of these
platforms is proprietary, and likely won't be around very long. After the
bullying is done, and the service becomes uncool, the bullied kid still
suffers.

On the bright side, the bully could grow up to be a really amazing person, and
and maybe won't be labelled this way his whole life.

------
JacobJans
Think about this:

How many times in the past 24 hours did you unconsciously check your email,
browse Facebook, visit a website, or check some other app?

Do you ever find yourself looking at your phone, and not remember consciously
deciding to look at it?

If you're like 90% of smart phone users, this happens to you all the time.

Sure, you can be like the 10% that doesn't fall victim to the "slot machine"
psychology of the modern internet. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean the other
90% aren't going to impact your life.

I feel the quality of conversations has vastly decreased, on average, because
of the intense level of smart-phone addiction that is so common now. Even if
nobody is looking at their phone. ("Attention residue" is a real thing.)

~~~
BeetleB
>I feel the quality of conversations has vastly decreased, on average, because
of the intense level of smart-phone addiction that is so common now. Even if
nobody is looking at their phone. ("Attention residue" is a real thing.)

It's a continuum. I used to write letters once. I loved email when it was new
("new" where I lived and amongst my friends). Within a few years, people who
once wrote me a few pages of letters would rarely write more than 2-3 lines in
email. It's gone downhill from there.

------
mchannon
I can't help but wonder if there's not another side to this coin.

Just as gangs run prisons to effects both bad and good, I wonder if the new
norms these young cyborgs (can't live without the technology that's glued to
them) don't have a silver lining about them.

Parents have a window into their kids' social circles that they didn't use to
have.

The four big bullies who'd corner the skinny kid in the alley and pummel him
can instantly be repelled by a 4 ounce piece of plastic. Not repelled,
deterred.

This brave new world has terrors aplenty and perhaps it's not a net positive
that every teenager comes preinstalled with a battery of apps. But maybe it
could be a net positive and we haven't realized it.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
I can't think of much more terrifying as a 14 year old than if my parents had
a window into my world. And I had a great relationship with them.

I would have rather gotten beat up once or twice as a kid, and learn to handle
it, than have constant parental surveillance.

Privacy really is dead.

~~~
t0astbread
Isn't that just a matter of having parents that respect your privacy (in other
words: good parents)?

------
sxates
I'm quite glad there were no smart phones when I was in middle school. There
were sufficient humiliations, and I'm glad they weren't amplified outside a
relatively small group.

------
mwnivek
If you're interested in a movie that explores similar themes of anxiety,
social media, and just trying to survive middle school, I recommend Bo
Burnham's film "Eighth Grade". Its average review is 90/100 on Metacritic, and
is available to watch for free on Amazon Prime:

[https://www.amazon.com/Eighth-Grade-Elsie-
Fisher/dp/B07FJNMS...](https://www.amazon.com/Eighth-Grade-Elsie-
Fisher/dp/B07FJNMSFN/)

~~~
markdown
> is available to watch for free on Amazon Prime

In my country it isn't possible to watch any show on Amazon for free. You have
to at the very least pay to be part of a club called Amazon Prime before you
can watch shows. Is it different where you are?

~~~
CDSlice
Isn't that what he said? If you have Amazon Prime you can watch it for free as
part of your membership.

~~~
markdown
Oh ok. I was confused by the use of the word "free", which you've used as
well. Perhaps it means something different to Amazon customers.

------
fixermark
Wait, why did Brian's follower count drop? Being the kid who fell in the
puddle should be boosting his follower numbers.

------
jerkstate
Boy, this sure is a rosy picture of how school bullying worked in 2008

------
dankohn1
My son is a 12-year-old 7th grader in a public school in Manhattan. Phones are
absolutely banned in the school building, and no one wants to lose their
phone. The story could happen during out lunch, but not on school property.

More generally, the school has a big focus on anti-bullying and the kids
generally seem much nicer and more together than my memories of middle school.

~~~
droithomme
No phones, all phones are confiscated and you never get them back is a very
good policy. Likewise with knives and guns at schools.

~~~
Maximus9000
> all phones are confiscated and you never get them back

That's an interesting concept! Here in Ontario, Canada... it's my
understanding that teachers have limited ability to take phones away from
students... but they don't really want to because it becomes a liability
issue. Some of these phones are worth $1000 and if the teacher misplaces it or
another student swipes it, the teacher can be on the hook.

If the policy is that the student doesn't get the phone back at all, that
changes things significantly.

~~~
adrianratnapala
> If the policy is that the student doesn't get the phone back at all, ...

That policy is commonly called stealing -- though it probably has a more
specific label under law.

Schools traditionally have been implement civil-asset forfeiture for small
stuff because people rarely kick up a fuss, and the schools can quietly hand
things back when they do.

But if they start taking away people's smartphones there will be push-back.

------
gwbas1c
Back when I was in high school, events like someone slipping and spilling soup
all over themselves would be repeated forever and ever.

~~~
JimiofEden
My experience is the same. High/Middle schoolers (circa late 90s early 2000s)
would remember every little detail if you did something embarrassing. The most
notorious would usually come with a nickname to cement it.

This story is very heavily straw manned to make a point, but I can believe
that social media would amplify my above experience by magnitudes, so it's not
unjustified. I just don't believe that Brian would have been quite so lucky
back in 2008 either.

~~~
tru3_power
While I can understand where you’re coming it’s probably much harder to brush
something off that’s been recorded and passed around vs. being recalled from
memory.

~~~
JimiofEden
Definitely. That's why I'd say that the power of modern technology amplifies
the issues that you'd normally see in the 90s/00s

------
politician
I think the problem here is that it's legal to post content of minors without
parental consent on the Internet, but more specifically on the major platforms
that minors use.

When my child's daycare wants to work with the local university to do a
behavioral study of toddlers, they ask for parental consent to film
interactions. I can decline. Actively preventing disclosure without consent is
beneath the major platforms; at best, it's a checkbox at sign up.

What should the age limit be? COPPA says 13 but these platforms oppose,
resist, or pay that lip service to that.

> Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Facebook, has expressed opposition to
> COPPA and stated "That will be a fight we take on at some point. My
> philosophy is that for education you need to start at a really, really young
> age." [1]

Maybe that age limit should be raised to 16, and maybe harsh GDPR-style
privacy fines should be assessed against platforms that fail to prevent usages
that violates COPPA.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Pr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act)

~~~
akeck
One approach would be to take the issue to individual school boards. I think
it's probably initially easier to propagate prohibition of posting content of
any current student as part of a school system's acceptable use policy to ever
greater numbers of school systems than to go the law making route.

~~~
mjevans
A better solution might be to not attempt to replicate the criminal justice
system, but possibly to classify this more like a traffic infraction. Only
there should never be a monetary cost, it should be a community service one
for both the child and the parent.

------
davvolun
WTF.. Because bullying that ostracized certain kids didn't exist before social
media -- that's why Columbine didn't happen?

We have got to stop this "good old days" nonsense. That doesn't exclude or
excuse the real problems that social media and always being online can cause,
but stop pretending that dad wouldn't have been reading the paper or rushing
off to work, or otherwise disengaged from Brian in the morning, his sisters
wouldn't have heard from the school grapevine all about him falling down.

How about the kinda weird, quirky kid, who finds that putting videos of
himself on Youtube helps him deal with his problems, like ADHD or dyslexia?
Maybe without those videos, that kid would never have the confidence to
succeed in the classroom.

> Teach your children that boredom is important.

Give me a fucking break! Exactly how does that lesson go down -- I imagine
it's pretty similar to abstinence-only education. Some kids will listen, and
it will probably screw up their lives anyway.

Why do people think kids are a blank canvas they can paint on? Were you when
you were a kid?

~~~
davvolun
> Tell them to go outside and explore the real world. Childhood is fleeting.
> It shouldn’t be spent staring at a screen.

Because every single kid in the history of the world hasn't heard that, either
from their parents, on TV, from a teacher.

------
yesenadam
Is middle school just a thing in the USA (I assume from the comments) or other
countries too? I don't know anything about it. How many years is it, what age
range? It's always the same number of years?

(Also, people from the USA use the words 'sophomore', 'freshman' etc as if
they're internationally understood, I have no idea what they mean, although
I've heard them many times. Something to do with middle school perhaps.)

In Australia there's just primary school (Kindergarten + years 1-6), then high
school (secondary school, years 7-12), then university (tertiary).

~~~
amanaplanacanal
I think there are a couple different systems. When I was in school it was
primary (1-6), junior high (7-9) and high school (10-12). I think more common
now is primary (k-5), middle school (6-8) and high school (9-12), but it might
vary from place to place.

~~~
ams6110
Middle school is either grades 6-8 or 7-8 in USA. If 7-8 sometimes called
Junior High School. High School is grades 9-12

------
afpx
Having lived through the 80s and 90s, this actually made me feel like today is
better than before.

~~~
MBCook
Really? Sounds like a nightmare to me. Why do you think it’s better?

~~~
afpx
For one, life was much more violent. A kid of low status, nerdy, or kind of
weird (like me) could expect physical violence weekly, if not daily. Second,
parents, and adults in general, were out of the picture. I actually suspect
that some parents would even enable or encourage the conflict. And, then, we
lacked social support networks like kids have today today.

Kids then were still as bored as they are now. But, instead of being able to
use video games and apps to get their dopamine rush, they had to rely on
causing trouble (which likely contributed to the increased violence) or risky
decisions. Finally, there was no where place to escape to. There were no other
social options. Kids today are at least able to socialize, gather, and meet
online. For instance, I'm amazed to learn about how my nieces and nephews form
large social communities of friends on-line. They have rich social lives, even
though some of their closest friends are scattered around the globe.

Maybe my perspective is skewed. But, if you think I'm exaggerating, at least
watch a bunch of films from that period. Maybe you'll know what I mean.

I honestly expected to read this post and sympathize. But, instead, as I read
the descriptions of the kids of today, I felt ashamed that I actually felt a
little jealous.

~~~
VladimirGolovin
Seconding all points. Having grown up in 80's Russia, this is exactly what I
feel.

------
mevile
Middle school was hard when I was a kid. Maybe it's harder now, but it wasn't
a picnic 20 years ago either.

~~~
firebones
It was _never_ a picnic and I go back farther than 20 years.

I'm not discounting new brands of terror, but propensity for cruelty is the
constant--the _medium_ of cruelty is the main difference.

------
droithomme
Is it legal to take humiliating films of children in private settings and
publish those films globally without the consent of any of the parties? Or
would the person posting, and the company distributing the film be liable for
criminal acts?

Perhaps this could be solved with a series of criminal and civil prosecutions.

~~~
t0astbread
I can't speak for US law but I'm pretty sure it is (it is in my country
afaik).

However, I can imagine it's close to impossible to execute if you don't know
who posted the material or it has been reposted like in the article.

------
joejerryronnie
Wow, the bullies these days just mean-post on social media? In my day they'd
pull knives on you.

~~~
olyjohn
No. They pull a knife on you now, while their friend films it and posts the
video online of you crying afterwards.

------
null000
Yeah, I was in High School around 2008. Facebook was already a thing, as was
obsession over followers. Smart phones had been around for a bit, many kids
had them and had their phonest as had Twitter and a few other things.

Middle school just kinda sucks. It was easily the worst period of my life, and
I don't think that's a rarity in America.

------
mirimir
My parents moved a lot. Every couple years. They were some sort of diplomatic
staff. But just exactly what they did was never very clear to me.

But anyway, I was always the new foreign kid. Some times were good, and some
were bad. But stuff didn't follow me from one place to another.

I wonder how that would work out now.

------
asudosandwich
My anxiety disorder kicked off around the age I realized I was too old to be
that shy - about 7th grade in early 90s.

I don’t know what I would have done if reality back then was anything like the
second half of the story and not the first. I’m grateful it wasn’t at least.

------
AcerbicZero
American Vandal Season 2 digs into this topic a bit. I'm sometimes caught off
guard by how deep that show goes in such a comical manner.

------
z3t4
There's different times today, people want to be famous, a viral video might
launch a career.

