Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
Of course, in the US, it's called middle school...
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Back in my day, it was called "Junior High". So they're twiddling with near-synonyms in school names too - just like with juvenile, adolescent and young adult in book names.
In general, I think they are trying to find a name that sounds less negative or offensive, for the sake of better marketing. You see the same thing with describing different ethnicities - words that were once totally acceptable for describing a group of people are now taboo and may get you yelled at or beaten for using (and I'm not talking about the obviously derogatory terms, I'm talking normal, innocent conversational terms).
Young adult sounds more grown up than adolescent, which sounds more grown up than juvenile, which sounds more grownup than child - at least to someone currently in that age group.
The cool thing about getting old (like me), is you can enjoy the childish stuff again, without shame. In books, and other stuff too. As good as the movie "Saving Private Ryan" was, given a repeat viewing choice between that and say, "Tremors", I'd pick Tremors every time. Yeah, juvenile - but fun. And nowhere near as emotionally draining as Ryan.