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Page 41
44. Official Bulletin on Promotion and Students' Programs, 1917, from
Assoc. Supt. in Charge of Secondary Schools, for N.Y. City.
45. Lewis, W.D. _Democracy's High School_, p. 45.
46. Ruling of Board of Supt's., New York City, June, 1917.
CHAPTER VI
DO THE FAILURES REPRESENT A LACK OF CAPABILITY OR OF FITNESS FOR HIGH
SCHOOL WORK ON THE PART OF THOSE PUPILS?
In view of the fact that some of the pupils do not fail in any part of
their school work, there is a certain popular presumption that failure
must be significant of pupil inferiority when it occurs. That
connotation will necessarily be correct if we are to judge the
individual entirely by that part of his work in which he fails, and to
assume that the failing mark is a fair indication of both achievement
and ability. Although the pupil is only one of the contributing factors
in the failure, nevertheless it happens that cherished opportunity,
prizes, praise, honors, employment, and even social recognition are
frequently proffered or withheld according to his marks in school.
Still further, the pupil who accumulates failures may soon cease to be
aggressively alive and active; he is in danger of acquiring a
conforming attitude of tolerance toward the experience of being
unsuccessful. Therefore it is particularly momentous to the pupil,
should the school record ascribed to him prove frequently to be
incongruous with his potential powers. It has already been pointed out
in these pages that the failures frequently tend to designate specific
difficulties rather than what is actually the negative of 'ability plus
application.' This does not at all deny that in some instances there
appears to be the ability minus the application, and that in other
cases the pupils are simple unfitted for the work required of them.
1. SOME ARE EVIDENTLY MISFITS
There is a strong presumption that many of the 485 pupils who failed in
50 per cent of their school work and dropped out (reported in Chapter
IV) represent misfits for at least the kind of school subjects offered
or required. One cannot say that even hopeless failing in any
particular subject is a safe criterion of general inability, or that
failure in abstract sort of mental work would be a sure prophecy of
failure in more concrete hand work. It is altogether probable that some
of the individuals in the above number were not endowed to profit by an
academic high school course, and that others were the restless ones at
a restless age, who just would not fit in, whatever their abilities.
But even of these pupils a considerable number display sufficient
resourcefulness to satisfy many of their failures and to persist in
school two, three, or four years. There are perhaps at least a few
others who, without failing, drop out early, prompted by the conviction
of their own unfitness to succeed in the high school. Yet collectively
this group is by no means a large one. This conclusion is in harmony
with the judgment of former Superintendent Maxwell, of New York
City,[47] who stated that "the number of children leaving school
because they have not the native ability to cope with high school
studies, is, in my judgment, small." Likewise Van Denburg[48] reached
the conclusion that "at least 75 per cent of the pupils who enter (high
school) have the brains, the native ability to graduate, if they chose
to apply themselves." With many who fail not even is the application
lacking, as the facts of section 2 will seem to prove.
2. MOST OF THE FAILING PUPILS LACK NEITHER ABILITY OR EARNESTNESS
When we take into account that by the processes of selection and
elimination only thirty to forty per cent of the pupils who enter the
elementary school ever reach high school,[49] it is readily admitted
that the high school population is a selected group, of approximately 1
in 3. Then of this number we again select less than 1 in 3 to graduate.
This gives a 1 in 9 selection, let us say, of the elementary school
entrants. For relatively few general purposes in life may we expect to
find so high a degree of selection. Yet in this 1 in 9 group (who
graduate) the percentage of the failing pupils is as high as that of
the non-failing ones, and the percentage of graduates does not drop
even as the number of failures rise. So far as ability is required to
meet the conditions of graduation they are manifestly provided with
it. Following this comparison still further, the failing pupils who do
not graduate have an average number of failures that is only .6 higher
than for the failing graduates (4.9-4.3); but barring those
non-graduates considered in section 1 of this chapter, the average is
practically the same as for the failing graduates. Moreover, the
failing non-graduates continue in school, even in the face of failure,
much longer than do the non-failing non-graduates. That gives evidence
of the same quality to which the manager of a New York business firm
paid tribute when he said that he preferred to employ a high school
graduate for the simple reason that the graduate had learned, by
staying to graduate, how to 'stick to' a task.
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