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Page 30
DROP-OUTS FAILING IN 50 PER CENT OR MORE OF THEIR TOTAL WORK,
AND THEIR DISTRIBUTION BY SEMESTERS OF DROPPING OUT
SEMESTERS
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
221 B. 81 69 17 24 7 15 4 2 1 1
264 G. 98 68 20 35 14 10 5 8 5 1
% of Total 36.9 28.2 7.6 12.2 4.3 5.2 1.9 2.0 1.2 .4
This grouping includes 485 pupils, or 11.5 per cent of the total number
of 4,205 drop-outs. But whatever the part may be that is played by
failing it is evident that it does not operate to cause their early
loss to the school in nearly all of these instances. It may be noted
here that it is difficult to find any justification for allowing or
forcing these pupils to endure two, three, or four years of a kind of
training for which they have shown themselves obviously unfitted. To be
sure, they have satisfied a part of these failures by repetitions or
otherwise, but only to go on adding more failures. A device of
'superannuation' is employed in certain schools by which a pupil who
has failed in half of his work for two semesters, and is sixteen years
of age, is supposed to be dropped automatically from the school. This
device seems designed to evade a difficulty in the absence of any real
solution for it, and harmonizes with the school aims that are
prescribed in terms of subject matter rather than in terms of the
pupils' needs. From the standpoint of the individual pupil his peculiar
qualities are not likely to be fashioned to the highest degree of
usefulness by this procedure. It simply serves notice that the pupil
must make the adjustment needed, as the school cannot or will not.
Notwithstanding the testimony furnished by the accumulation of failures
shown in Table IX, there are grounds for believing that for the major
portion of all the non-graduates the number of failures is not a prime
nor perhaps a highly important cause of their dropping out of school.
This conviction seems to be substantiated by the statement of
percentages below.
THE PERCENTAGE OF NON-GRADUATES WHO DROP OUT WITH
0 1 or 0 2 or fewer 3 or fewer 4 or fewer 5 or fewer
Failures Failures Failures Failures Failures Failures
41.8 50.6 60.7 69.2 76.4 80.8
The fact that nearly 81 per cent of the non-graduates have only 5
failures or less, taken in comparison with the fact that approximately
one fourth of the failing graduates have 8 or more failures, argues
that the number of failures alone can hardly be considered one of the
larger factors in causing the dropping out. In a report concerning the
working children of Cincinnati, H.T. Wooley remarks[33] that
"two-thirds of our children leaving the public schools are the
failures." This seems to suppose failing a large cause of the dropping
out. But this investigation of failure indicates that the percentage of
failure for those leaving is no higher than for the ones who do not
leave. A similar illustration is credited to O.W. Caldwell[34], who
makes reference to the large percentage of the failing pupils who leave
high school, without taking any recognition of the equally large
percentage of the failing pupils who continue in the high school.
There is in no sense any intention here to condone the large number of
failures simply because it is pointed out that they do not operate
chiefly to cause elimination from school. The above facts may lead to
some such conviction as that expressed by Wooley,[33] after giving
especial attention to those who had left school, that "the real force
that is sending a majority of these children out into the industrial
field is their own desire to go to work, and behind this desire is
frequently the dissatisfaction with school." A somewhat similar
conviction seems to be shared by King,[35] in saying that "the pupil
who yields unwillingly to the narrow round of school tasks ... will
grasp at almost any pretext to quit school." W.F. Book tabulated the
reasons why pupils leave high school,[36] as given by 1,051 pupils. He
found that discouragement, loss of interest, and disappointment affect
more pupils than all the other causes combined. Likewise Bronner
notes[37] that the 'irrational' sameness of school procedure for all
pupils often leads to "serious loss of interest in school work,
discouragement, truancy, and disciplinary problems." Still it may be
that the worst consequences of multiplied failures are not to those
dropping out. W.D. Lewis observes[38] that the failing pupil "speedily
comes to accept himself as a failure," and that "the disaster to many
who stay in the schools is greater than to those who are shoved out."
To the same point Hanus tells[39] us that "during the school period
aversion and evasion are more frequently cultivated than power and
skill, through the forced pursuit of uninteresting subjects." A pupil
who acquires the habit of failing and the attitude of accepting it as a
necessary evil may soon give up trying to win and become satisfied to
accept himself as less gifted, or even to accept life in general as
necessarily a matter of repeated failures. In a similar connection,
James E. Russell says,[40] "the boy who becomes accustomed to second
place soon fails to think at his best." Such psychological results in
regard to habits and attitude accruing from repeated failures are both
certain and insidious. And an education which purports to be for all
and to offer the highest training to each must abandon the inculcation
of attitudes of mind so detrimental to the individual and to the very
society which educates him.
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