Antedating of "Junior High School"

[Joel S. Berson]

At 1/11/2010 09:56 AM, ronbutters at AOL.COM wrote:
>Wouldn't a better place to look be education books and journals of
>the 1900s? I'd think that there would have been a good deal of
>theoretical discussion before a political body took action.

In support of this hypothesis, the same Columbus Ohio of 1909 is the
place and date of the currently-earliest OED quotation, which I cited
earlier and which is about the Board declaring itself in favour of
the system.  Yes, the Board must have had a proposal before it
earlier, and even earlier someone might even have had the theoretical notion.

Joel


>Just curious about the methodology here
>------Original Message------
>From: Baker, John
>Sender: ADS-L
>To: ADS-L
>ReplyTo: ADS-L
>Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Antedating of "Junior High School"
>Sent: Jan 11, 2010 8:00 AM
>
>Most of the newspaper examples are too brief to be sure what is
>intended, though it is usually clear that there is a Junior High
>School involved.  According to
>http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=2691, the first
>junior high school was authorized in Columbus, Ohio in 1909, which
>would seem to support Doug's point.  I don't know how reliable that
>source may be.
>
>However, I note that the newspaper examples all seem to be from Ohio
>(although Doug's 1904 Google Books example is from New York
>State).  At a minimum, that seems to suggest that "junior high
>school" was an established term in Ohio in 1909, even if there were
>aspects of the Columbus approach that were novel.
>
>
>John Baker
>
>
>________________________________
>
>From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Douglas G. Wilson
>Sent: Sun 1/10/2010 11:02 PM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Re: Antedating of "Junior High School"
>
>
>
>Baker, John wrote:
> > Various antedatings of this are available via Access Newspaper
> Archive, ....
>--
>
>Some of these are ambiguous, and I think mos, t or all of the pre-1900
>examples refer to something different from what is now called "junior
>high school". Some refer to a part of high school, sometimes years 9-10
>of 12 (with "senior" for years 11-12),_maybe_ sometimes year 11 of 12
>(like "junior class/year" now). Some early instances of "junior high
>school"_may_ mean "limited school extending only through grade 10" or
>something like that.
>
>At G-books, there is a 1904 example which explicitly refers to years
>7-8, similar to the modern sense (although here not obviously involving
>a separate school building or administration):
>
>http://tinyurl.com/ycu4e9w
>
>Some of the earlier examples_may_ have the same sense, but I haven't
>seen one I'm sure of.
>
>-- Doug Wilson
>
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