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Page 43
It is certain that some of the pupils are failures only in the narrow
academic sense. Information in reference to a few such cases was
volunteered by principals, without any effort being made to trace such
pupils in general. One of the pupils in this study who had graduated
after failing 23 times, was able to enter a reputable college, and had
reached the junior year at the time of this study. Two others with a
record of more than 20 failures each had made a decided success in
business--one as an automobile salesman and manager, the other in a
telegraph office. It is not unrecognized that the school has many
notable failures to indicate how even the fittest sometimes do not
survive the school routine. Among such cases were Darwin, Beecher,
Seward, Pasteur, Linnaeus, Webster, Edison, and George Eliot, who were
classed by their schools as stupid or incompetent.[51] In reference to
the pupil's responsibility for the failures, Thorndike remarks[52] that
"something in the mental or social and economic status of the pupil who
enters high school, or in the particular kind of education given in the
United States, is at fault. The fact that the elimination is so great
in the first year of the high school gives evidence that a large share
of the fault lies with the kind of education given in the United
States." Some of the facts for those are not eliminated so early are
still more definitely indicative that something is wrong with the kind
of education given, as the facts of the following section seem to point
out.
3. THE SCHOOL EMPHASIS AND THE SCHOOL FAILURES ARE BOTH CULMINATIVE IN
PARTICULAR SCHOOL SUBJECTS
As soon as we find any subject forced upon all pupils alike as a school
requirement we may be quite sure that it will not meet the demands of
the individual aptitudes and capacities of some portion of those
pupils. As a result an accumulation of failures will tend to mark out
such a uniformly required subject, whether it be mathematics, science
or Latin. It was pointed out in section 4 of Chapter II that Latin and
mathematics, although admittedly in charge of teachers ranking with the
best, have both a high percentage of the total failures and the highest
percentage of failures reckoned on the number taking the subject. In
both regards there is a heaping up of failures for those two subjects,
but furthermore there is an arbitrary emphasis culminating in these two
subjects beyond any others excepting that English is a very generally
required subject. In reference to these two required subjects the
pupils who graduate are not more successful than those who do not. When
the emphasis is on the teaching of the subject rather than on the
teaching of the pupil there is no incongruity in making the subject a
requirement for all, but both are incongruous with what psychology has
more lately recognized and pointed out as to the wide range of
individual differences. A similar situation is evidenced by the
percentage of failure in science as reported for the St. Louis high
school in Chapter II. A year of physics had been made compulsory for
all, and taught in the second year.[53] Its percentage of failures
accordingly mounts to the highest place. Mr. Meredith, who conducted
that portion of the survey, rightly regards the policy as a mistake,
and recommends that the needs of individual pupils be considered.
It is indeed striking how failures of the pupils are grouped under
particular subjects of difficulty, and how the pupils fail again and
again in the same general subject. No educational expert would seem to
be needed to diagnose a goodly number of these chronic cases of failing
and to detect a productive source of the whole trouble if only the
following distribution were presented to him.
DISTRIBUTION OF PUPILS ACCORDING TO THE NUMBER OF TIMES THEY HAVE
FAILED IN THE SAME SUBJECT
No. of
Times 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14
Boys 2852 1416 425 196 73 25 2 4 1 1 1 0 1
Girls 2812 1722 501 250 98 31 7 8 3 1 0 3 0
By 'same subjects' the same general divisions are designated, as
English, Latin, mathematics. We may be led to note first that a major
portion of the above distribution of pupils belongs to those who fail
but once in the same subject; but then we note that by far the greater
number of failures comprised by that distribution belong to those who
fail two or more times in the same subject. To state that fact more
specifically, 68.5 per cent of the total 17,960 failures involved in
this study are made by two or more failures in the same subject, while
31.5 per cent of the failures belong to a more promiscuous and varied
collection of failures, of not more than one in any subject. It will be
noted here that some subjects do not have a greater continuity than one
year or even one semester on the school program. Such subjects provide
the least possibility of successive failures in the same field. A
further analysis shows that the failures incurred by three or more
instances occurring in the same subject form 33.6 per cent of the
entire number; and that 18 per cent of the total is comprised of four
or more instances of failure in the same subject. There is small
probability that such a multiplication of failures by subjects will
characterize the subjects which are least productive of failures in
general, and such is not the case in fact. Latin and mathematics are
again the chief contributors, and this would seem to be a fact also for
those schools quoted from outside of this study, for purposes of
comparison in Chapter II.
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