There was something in the spirit of the middle school I was visiting that seemed competitive and non-caring. It was very different from the warm, thoughtful spirit of the school I had visited the week before. I began to wonder how a particular school develops the ethos that it does.

Every school-whether it is a community school financed by the government or a Christian school paid for by the church or by parents-has an ethos, a spirit that pervades the whole environment. It is a spirit that motivates moral attitudes, manners, intellectual attitudes, practices, and ideals. It colors how instruction is carried on and perceived by the students. It affects social relationships. It becomes part of school assemblies and chapels. This spirit may work as a positive force or as a negative force. And one cannot predict the ethos of a school by looking at its location, the credentials of the teaching staff, or whether it is a Christian school or a community school.

The ethos of a school is important, in part, because students learn better in a safe, warm, caring environment. But the reasons go far beyond that. We claim that Christian children and young people are image bearers of God. We recognize that we educate them so that they may fulfill the responsibilities of image bearers. However, it is not only the individual person who bears the image of God. The Christian school community as a whole also is an image bearer and must fulfill these responsibilities. In Christian schools we also claim to be preparing students to live as disciples of Jesus Christ in a democratic society. Discipleship requires an understanding of responsibility and justice along with ability to critically examine different areas of life to determine whether justice is present. Students who are to become the agents of change that Christians are commanded to be must be educated in an environment that provides opportunities to practice responsibility and justice, not just talk about the concepts. That is why spirit of caring, responsibility, and justice is so important in the Christian school. And in the community school where students are learning to be responsible citizens of a democratic society, a spirit of caring, responsibility, and justice is equally important.

What causes this spirit to develop? How does a school become what it is? It is difficult to trace the development of the ethos of school, the spirit that motivates the beliefs and practices of the students and staff. We would like to think that in a Christian school the teachings of faith help produce such a spirit and therefore the spirit will always be a positive force. Those who plead for a return to the teaching of values in community schools are convinced that those values will provide for a positive ethos. However, it does not really work that way. It is far more likely that the ideals held by parents, the teachers, and the community take the leading role in forming this spirit. These ideals may or may not be consistent with the expressed belief statement of the school, and they may or may not be acknowledged, but they are extremely important. Then, too, the organization of the curriculum and the type of instruction in school surely play their part. And, of course, there are the models provided by the teachers, administrator, and staff. All of these forces work together to create the ethos of the school.

Parents, administrators, and teachers must see the planning and development of a positive ethos as a matter of school policy. If teachers fail to demonstrate concern for other people or concern for classroom conditions that promote attention and learning, students will not see those characteristics as important. If one student bumps into another in the hall, it really matters whether the student says, "I'm very sorry," or "Keep out of my way, stupid," and teachers ought to talk about such behavior. If a student makes an unusual and discerning comment during a class discussion, it really matters how other students respond. It really matters whether they murmur in appreciation or glare in disdain, and teachers should work toward a classroom environment that promotes appreciation for thoughtful ideas. Students need practice in caring.

If I were to describe an ideal school for students in grades six through eight, the picture would likely include students actively engaged in learning, working on projects together, and helping and supporting each other. They would receive guidance in their thinking from the teacher as they plan the next stage of their projects, and they would take responsibility for their own learning and that of other students in both academic and athletic ventures. The ethos would be one of caring and encouragement.

Contrast that with the picture of a school in which students are working individually to answer questions at the end of a chapter in preparation for a test on which only a few students will earn high grades, most will earn average grades, and a few are destined to fail. After the test they will have tryouts to see who will make the basketball team, the cheerleading squad, or the band or choir. All planning for curriculum and instruction is done by the teachers, who expect the students to obediently do as they are told. Socially the students arrange themselves in cliques or groups depending on the way they dress and, perhaps, the income level of their parents.

Some may see positive elements in the second picture, believing that students will learn responsibility that way. To the extent that they do learn responsibility in such a competitive environment, they learn only the responsibility for completing their work under the direction of a teacher. What they fail to learn in such an environment Is to willingly take responsibility for helping another person learn or for helping another person cope with the tasks of the school situation.

Many educators believe that the final basis for one's adult value frame is largely a result of the experiences one has during the ages of 10 through 14 (Toepfer, 1979). To the extent that this is true, then what the young person comes to know about himself or herself as a responsible disciple of Jesus Christ during this period becomes crucially important in shaping the rest of that person's life. One's social and emotional development as a person standing before the face of the Lord are surely as important in schooling as one's academic performance. And the environment in which that development takes place is important in determining the kind of person the student will be and will become.

There is clear evidence that the organization of the curriculum and the type of instruction students encounter in grades six, seven, and eight go a long way toward shaping the ethos of a school (Lipsitz, 1984). Students in middle school are often faced with a product-oriented curriculum and with teachers who are more concerned with preparing students for high school than they are with the characteristics of learners unique to this age group. The effect of middle school as a training ground for high school has been to move academic tasks better suited to the high school into the school (Stronks, 1984). This move has been encouraged by parents and teachers who are disturbed about reports that educational standards and achievement have declined. "If our schools were only more demanding and had higher academic standards," they reason, "our problems would be solved."

There are three dangers with this kind of middle school. When instruction is too much and too soon, some bewildered students turn away from academic tasks altogether. A few drop out while they are still in middle school, but many others just tune out. Second, when the academic tasks of high school are moved into middle school, the skills which should be developed in middle school are often ignored. Since these skills are not carefully taught, learning is left to chance. And third, such a concept of schooling leads to a competitive environment in which those who can function well in academics or in athletics take pleasure in their ability to do so those who cannot function well in such areas become increasingly disillusioned. Surely there are school environments better suited to the goals of Christian education than the traditional one with we are familiar.

The highly structured junior high school which appears to run so well may, in fact, be inhibiting the appropriate development of people. At a time of life when independent action needs to be learned, conformity is more honored than is individual expression. At a time of life when students are hypersensitive to criticism, sarcastic and judgmental comments from teachers along with a narrowly directed program almost ensures that students will experience low self-esteem. In 1987 Education Week reported a two-year study involving 3,000 students which revealed that elementary school students have greater opportunities to make decisions and to express opinions than do junior high students.

Anthony Bryk of the University of Chicago suggests that beneath the veneer of the recent educational reform movement there is an unaddressed question of aims. Many current school problems are not fundamentally issues of efficiency and effectiveness, even they may appear to be so. Rather, they arise out of a desiccated sense of institution purpose that fosters alienating experiences for students and teachers alike. If this assessment is correct, then current problems are not likely to be resolved through the piecemeal adjustments to school operations that are now occurring. A regeneration rather than a reform of schools may be in order (Bryk, 1988, p. 256).

Bryk has studied community schools and Roman Catholic schools closely and his conclusions lead to another question. If it is true that our community schools are in need of such regeneration, then what about Christian schools? Have they escaped the need for regeneration? It would be difficult to say without a close, in-depth study of the schools. We need to carefully examine our schools to see whether they are following a pattern of preparing students for successfully competing in an individualistic, secular, materialistic world or whether they truly are preparing students to become responsible disciples of Jesus Christ in such a world.

Middle school students are not only supposed to be learning how to live as disciples of Christ in their future lives. They also need to be living as disciples while they are in school. Therefore, the ethos of the school must be one that encourages and demands discipleship. Part of our task, then, lies in understanding how to create an environment that promotes such learning.

One of the problems in education (including Christian education) has been the gap between the findings from the world of psychology about how environments are created and maintained for learning and the use of that knowledge in classrooms. Often by the time teachers have been informed about a given theory of instruction, the theory has been so misinterpreted that teachers are left bewildered, and applications of the theory are pushed aside while teachers return to procedures with which they are most comfortable.

Chapter 1 of this book will describe the history of how junior high schools and middle schools came to be and will examine differing views of education for middle school students. Chapter 2 will describe the physical, intellectual, and emotional characteristics of middle school students and the way they learn. Chapter 3 will explain what we look for when we define successful schooling for this level. Chapter 4 will describe a type of Christian middle school that would meet the needs of students at this age level and would also be in keeping with the goals of Christian education, and Chapter 5 will show ways in which such a school can be planned and developed.

Part II of the book has been written by educators and administrators who are presently working with Christian middle schools. Kenneth Kuipers, who describes the role of the administrator, has been a teacher in a community middle school and is now principal of Holland Christian Middle School in Holland, Michigan. Daniel Day and David Koetje, writers of the chapter on advisor-advisee relationships, are principals at Seymour Christian School and Oakdale Christian School In Grand Rapids, Michigan. Vernon Groenendyk, who describes exploratory units, has been a middle schooI teacher and is presently principal at West Side Christian School in Grand Michigan.

The writers of the interdisciplinary units in the appendix are teachers who are involved in planning and teaching the units describe.