Charles W. Eliot, president of Harvard University from 1869 to 1909, has been credited by educational historians with either the conception of the junior high school or the inspiration behind the junior high school movement. This study largely used only primary sources and secondary sources from the period before or during the emergence of the junior high school, and not those dating after the fact. An examination of those sources reveals that Eliot did not envision the junior high school academic structure, nor was he concerned with the developmental needs of preadolescents. Additional sources refute the notion that the development of junior high schools warrants the term "movement" at all. Eliot's role as the founder of the junior high school movement has been inaccurately defined in educational literature, and while educational historians have found it convenient to label the establishment of junior high schools as a "movement," there is no evidence that educators deliberately and rationally sought pedagogical changes for the benefit of preadolescents. Twenty-four endnotes and a bibliography are included. (NL)