Stuck in the Middle with You

Fall 2023, by Whitney Cranford Crowell

When our child is small, we work hard to introduce her to the universe she inhabits. She learns colors and shapes, letters and numbers. She asks hundreds of questions, and because everything is so new, she does some of her best learning simply by existing in the world. Small children are concrete thinkers and deal best in facts. Two and two make four. Gravity causes objects to fall. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. The early years are all about giving our children a good grasp of what is true, quantifiable, and absolute.

But as she approaches the middle grades, the way a child thinks begins to change. She develops an ability to think abstractly that she didn’t have before. Learning becomes less about the accumulation of objective knowledge and more about the ability to use that knowledge in new and exciting ways. In the middle years, the home educator’s goal shifts too, from teaching absolute truth to teaching the child what to do with the truths she has learned and how to think about and arrive at the truth for herself.

Parents are often frustrated by middle school curriculum. This curriculum can seem to be stuck in neutral, repeating the content learned in earlier grades or going to the content they anticipate their student will encounter in high school. Students may begin to question the relevance of the topics set before them. Why do I need to learn algebra? When will I ever use this in my life? Parents sometimes find that they don’t have a good rebuttal, and sometimes parents themselves even begin to question the purpose of teaching some subjects. After all, they can’t remember the last time they needed to graph a linear function either.

To be effective, the homeschooling parent needs to know not only the next step on the path but also the ultimate destination and the steps in between. The end goal of a well-rounded education is not simply a person who can regurgitate a set of factual data. A good education produces a person who can think deeply, logically, and critically about any topic necessary, who can use his God-given reason to reach his own conclusions, who isn’t swayed to and fro by every shifting opinion, and who can perhaps even convince others of that which he or she has determined to be true—lofty goals, indeed. But keeping these goals in mind can equip parents to make sound decisions about what and how they teach in middle school and beyond and avoid falling into the “when will I use this” trap.

By the middle grades, content no longer reigns supreme. The student will, of course, continue to encounter new facts and more detail about subjects he studied in elementary school. But these are no longer the end of learning but the beginning. Now he will start to use his knowledge to analyze and make inferences that are far less concrete than the bare facts he learned before. The child who memorized his addition facts now begins to think about what happens when the addends are no longer numerals but symbols of unknown quantities. He knows that gravity is the name we give to the force that pulls objects toward Earth, but now he starts to investigate what that force is and how it operates. He understands that, and perhaps even why, Thomas Jefferson put pen to parchment, but now his newfound mental maturity allows him to examine the meanings behind the Founding Fathers’ words, their meaning in the past, and their implications for the present and future.

A middle-schooler starts to form distinct opinions—and she’s likely not shy about telling you exactly what she thinks about everything from your choice of clothes and music to your request that she set the table for dinner. But she will also begin to form opinions academically, and she can learn to channel those opinions into academic arguments. She’s beginning to learn to think critically, problem-solve logically, examine facts and evidence, and form her own conclusions regarding their significance and meaning.

So while your middle-grade curriculum will still deal with objective knowledge, your underlying task as a teacher is to foster those skills that encourage this type of analytical thinking. Content is a vehicle for that scaffolding, not simply the goal in and of itself. In the middle years, phonics instruction gives way to literary discussions focusing on the characters’ motivations and the author’s intent. History still hinges on important dates, places, and people, but now the student begins to make connections between events and draws conclusions about the factors that contributed to important inflection points and the shifting values that motivate different people and cultures to behave in different ways. The student still needs to know the basic scientific facts he accumulated through elementary school, but now he also starts to question why and how these truths exist, form new hypotheses himself, and apply the scientific method to test them. And, of course, he will continue to build on some of the skills he began in the early grades, including reading and comprehending increasingly complex text and writing, especially his analysis of a topic supported by evidence.

Being too utilitarian in your thinking about your middle-schooler’s curriculum can keep you from appreciating these important skills and how that subject content drives their development. Be careful not to conflate the usefulness of a topic with its immediate application to daily life. Traditional subjects have become traditional for a reason. Before you scrap a topic, make sure that you’re not scrapping a venue for an important cognitive skill or that you have other methods in place to develop that skill. Set goals that reflect the skills you want your child to develop through any given course of study, and ensure that the content serves the skills and not vice-versa.

The great thing about content being secondary to skills in middle school is that it gives you ample room to customize your child’s curriculum to her interests. With a solid and growing understanding of her academic world, the middle-grade student now finds that some parts of it fascinate her more than others. You can take advantage of this development by using her unique interests to cultivate the skills she needs in a way that is fun and exciting for her. While some subjects—math, in particular—retain a well-defined scope and sequence that needs to be followed through the middle grades, many others are wide open.

Don’t stress about whether to study biology or earth science, American history versus world history, classic lit or fantasy. High school courses typically do not assume any previous content knowledge, and a student with well-developed cognitive skills will be equipped to study any topic at the high school level. Where possible, let your student help make decisions about what content she learns, or choose topics you think lend themselves to your goals while also interesting your child. If you’re evaluating a pre-written curriculum, online program, or other educational tool, ask yourself what cognitive skills it seeks to develop and how well it does so. Be wary of programs that only seem to foster factual recall with little to no reading, writing, logic, analysis, or critical thinking or that only teach to a quiz or test.

With their advancing attention spans and reading and writing skills, middle schoolers also are becoming increasingly capable of independence. But just because you can leave your child to work entirely alone doesn’t mean you always should. Books and videos can impart factual knowledge, but the critical skills we’ve discussed require human interaction to blossom. From this point forward in her education, your child’s learning will revolve around his ideas about the facts, not the facts themselves. Don’t leave your student to speak his opinions and analysis into a vacuum—or worse, not at all. He needs someone to challenge his assumptions, point out the flaws in his thinking, play devil’s advocate, and model the way to reason through an assertion to gauge its validity. And he needs to share the excitement of making a particularly important connection or experiencing the thrill of changing someone else’s mind with a well-reasoned argument. His ability to think, and his enthusiasm for it, is directly related to his connection with other people. In some cases, that person may be someone other than you. But as his home educator, it’s your job to ensure that someone performs this role well.

As the saying goes, good things come to those who wait. The important skills your child needs to think deeply for himself take years to develop, and sometimes parents can despair of wasting time and energy on “busy work.” Always be sure to ask yourself whether any given assignment is a waste of time by looking beneath the surface. Know why you do what you do, what knowledge you want your student to gain, and, most importantly, what cognitive skills you aim to develop. A well-educated person who thinks for himself is built over many years, and every little step matters.

Whitney Cranford Crowell knew she’d reached peak homeschooling when she bought a custom nine-foot by six-foot bookcase with matching ladder and still didn’t have room for all the books. She lives in her childhood home outside High Point with her husband of twenty-three years and their twelve-year-old son. Their daughter and first homeschool graduate is a National Merit Scholar at the University of Alabama. Whitney can be reached at whitneycrowell@gmail.com.