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Page 44
The above distribution speaks with graphic eloquence of how the school
tends to focus emphasis on the subject prescribed and then to demand
that the pupil be fitted or become fitted to the courses offered. Such
heaping up of failures will more likely mark those subjects which seem
to the pupil to be furthest from meeting his needs and appealing to his
interests.
In two of the schools studied, an X, Y, and Z division was formed in
certain difficult subjects for the failing pupils, by which they take
three semesters to complete two semesters of work. This plan, as judged
by results, is obviously insufficient for such pupils and tends to
prove further that the kind of work is more at fault in the matter of
failing than is the amount. Frequently a pupil who fails in the A
semester (first) will also fail in the X division of that subject as he
repeats it, while at the same time his work is perhaps not inferior in
the other subjects. The data for these special divisions were not kept
distinct in transcribing the records, so that it is not possible to
offer the tabulated facts here. There are numerous recognized
illustrations of how some pupils find some particular subject as
history, mathematics, or language distinctively difficult for them.
4. AN INDICTMENT AGAINST THE SUBJECT-MATTER AND THE TEACHING ENDS, AS
FACTORS IN PRODUCING FAILURES
The evidence already disclosed to the effect that the high school
entrants are highly selected, that few of the failing pupils lack
sufficient ability for the work, that they have manifested their
ability and energy in diverse ways, and that particular subjects are
unduly emphasized and by the uniformity of their requirement cause much
maladjustment, largely contributing to the harvest of failures, seems
to warrant an indictment against both the subject-matter and the
teaching ends for factoring so prominently in the production of
failures. There is clearly an administrative and curriculum problem
involved here in the sense that not a few of the failures seem to
represent the cost at which the machinery operates. This is in no sense
intended as a challenge to any subject to defend its place in the high
school curriculum, but it is meant to challenge the policy of the
indiscriminate requirement of any subject for all pupils, allowing only
that English of some kind will usually be a required subject for the
great majority of the pupils. It is simply demanded that Latin and
mathematics shall stand on their own merits, and that the same shall
apply to history and science or other subjects of the curriculum. So
far as they are taught each should be taught as earnestly and as
efficiently as possible; but it should not be asked that any teacher
take the responsibility for the unwilling and unfitted members of a
class who are forced into the subject by an arbitrary ruling which
regards neither the motive, the interest or the fitness of the
individual.
This indictment extends likewise to the teaching method or purpose
which focalizes the teachers' attention and energy chiefly on the
subject. Certain basic assumptions, now pretty much discredited, have
led to the avowed teaching of the subject for its own sake, and often
without much regard to any definite social utility served by it. This
charge seems to find an instance in the handling of the subject of
English so that 16.5 per cent of all the failures are contributed by
it, without giving even the graduate a mastery of direct, forceful
speech, as is so generally testified. Strangely enough, except in the
light of such teaching ends, the pupils who stay through the upper
years and to graduate have more failures in certain subjects than the
non-graduates who more generally escape the advanced classes of these
subjects. The traditional standards of the high school simply do not
meet the dominant needs of the pupils either in the subject-content or
in the methods employed. Some of these traditional methods and studies
are the means of working disappointment and probably of inculcating a
genuine disgust rather than of furnishing a valuable kind of
discipline. The school must provide more than a single treatment for
all cases. In each subject there must be many kinds of treatment for
the different cases in order to secure the largest growth of the
individuals included. This does not in any sense necessitate the
displacement of thoroughness by superficiality or trifling, but on the
contrary greater thoroughness may be expected to result, as helpful
adaptations of method and of matter give a meaningful and purposeful
motive for that earnest application which thoroughness itself demands.
SUMMARY OF CHAPTER VI
The pupil is but one of several factors involved in the failure, yet
the consequences are most momentous for him.
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