Middle School is About Lunch

It’s no surprise that our childhood has a significant impact on our future lives. Though I think most of us might not expect how much sway middle school truly holds. A number of books and films illustrate this as Julie Beck points out. “It’s really rare to see a coming-of-age story set in middle school. It’s much more often high school or even college.” Yet this dearth of literature belies the importance of that age.

‘Middle school is about lunch.’ [. . .]

Initially, the biggest shift middle school brings is one of context. Most American students move from spending the bulk of the day in one classroom and with one set of classmates—a social bubble of sorts—to multiple classrooms and multiple new classmates. Their number of potential social possibilities swells. Children are entering a period of maximum concern over acceptance or rejection and over how they will be perceived.

No wonder lunch looms large. In many schools, it is the time in the day when these preteens have the most agency. It is why the movies are filled with so many scenes of anxious children holding a tray and not being sure where to sit.

Lydia Denworth

The impact of surrounding friends is often taken in a negative context, i.e. “peer pressure.” But that idea is somewhat outdated. Denworth cites Steinberg’s research into the “peer effect,” explaining that “pressure doesn’t have to come into it, merely presence.” And this presence can have a genuine positive impact.

Too often educators and parents fail to appreciate the potential upside of these strong ties. Teachers often separate friends, whose banter can be disruptive in the classroom. Yet when researchers record student conversations during class, there is evidence that while kids are problem solving or working together, students collaborate more effectively with their friends. “Their dialogue is much deeper, cognitively more complex, than when we ask kids to work with just any classmate,” Juvonen said. “It’s really interesting that we as adults in the society often regard friendships more as a nuisance and a distraction rather than give them the value that they really deserve.”

[. . .]

But Steinberg and his colleagues have also shown that teenagers learn faster when they’re with their peers than they do by themselves. And they engage in more exploratory behavior when they’re with their peers.

Who the peers are becomes very important. “Parents shouldn’t worry about peer pressure or peer influence,” Steinberg said. “They should worry about who the peers are that their kids are hanging around with.” When kids hang around with students who get better grades, their own grades go up over time. . . .

“The question really is, whom are they influenced by and what is it they are being pressured to do?”

Lydia Denworth

Dossier

“The Outsize Influence of Your Middle-School Friends,” by Lydia Denworth, January 28, 2020. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/01/friendship-crucial-adolescent-brain/605638/?utm_source=feed

“In Middle School, ‘You’re Trying to Build a Parachute as You’re Falling,'” by Julie Beck, August 1, 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/08/bo-burnham-on-the-incredible-honesty-of-middle-schoolers-online/566579/

“How Middle School Failures Lead to Medical School Success,” by Jessica Lahey and Tim Lahey, March 19, 2013. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/03/how-middle-school-failures-lead-to-medical-school-success/274163/