The High School Failures Part 12

Thirty-three and three-tenths per cent of the repeated grades are repeated failures.

Few of the repeaters take reduced schedules.

The repeaters with an extra schedule are more successful in each of the pa.s.sing grades, and have 11.4 per cent less failures than repeaters with a normal or reduced schedule.

In the later subjects of the same kind, after failure and repet.i.tion, the unsuccessful grades are 2.2 per cent higher than for a similar situation without any repet.i.tion.

The grades in new work for repeaters are markedly superior to those in the repeated subjects, for the same semester.

As the number of identical repet.i.tions are increased (as high as six), the percentage of final failure rapidly rises.

The emphasis placed on repet.i.tion is excessive, and the faith displayed in it by school practice is unwarranted by the facts.

Relatively few of the failing pupils who continue in school discontinue the subject or subst.i.tute another after failure.

School examinations are employed for 10.3 per cent of the failures, with 37.5 per cent of success on the attempts.

The Regents' examinations are employed for 17.2 per cent of the failures, of which 72.8 per cent succeed in pa.s.sing, and in most cases immediately after the school failure.

Of those who continue the subject of failure without any repet.i.tion 52 per cent get pa.s.sing grades.

No form of school compensation can be considered as adequate which does not adapt the treatment to the kind and cause of the malady, as manifested by the failure symptoms.

REFERENCES:

42. Briggs, T.H. Report on Secondary Education, U.S. Comm. of Educ.

Report, 1914.

43. Snedden, D. In Johnson's _Modern High School._ II, 24, 26.

44. Official Bulletin on Promotion and Students' Programs, 1917, from a.s.soc. 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 a.s.sume 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 acc.u.mulates failures may soon cease to be aggressively alive and active; he is in danger of acquiring a conforming att.i.tude 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.

The success of the failing pupils in pa.s.sing the Regents' examinations does not give endors.e.m.e.nt to the suggestion that they are in any true sense weaklings. That they succeed here almost concurrently with the failure in the school testifies that 'they can if they will,' or conversely, as regards the school subject, that 'they can but they won't.' Of course it is possible that differences in the type of examinations or in the standards of judgment as employed by the school and the Regents may be a factor in the difference of results secured.

The great difficulty then seems to resolve itself into a technical problem of more successfully enlisting the energy and ability which they so irrefutably do possess in order to secure better school results, but perhaps in work that is better adapted to them. Again, the success with which these pupils carry a schedule of five or six subjects, besides other work not recognized in the treatment of this study, and retrieve themselves in the unattractive subjects of failure pleads for a recognition of their ability and enterprise. Their difficulty is without doubt frequently more physiological than psychological, except as they are the victims of a false psychology, that either disregards or misapplies the principles which Thorndike terms the law of readiness[50] to respond and the law of effect, and consequently depend largely on the one law of exercise of the function to secure the desired results.

Some additional evidence that the failing pupils can and do succeed in most of their subjects is provided by their earlier and later records, as disclosed by the total grades received for the semester first preceding and the one next following that in which the failure occurs.

There were of course no preceding grades for the failures that occur in the first semester, and none succeeding those that occur in the last semester spent in school. It is quite apparent from the following distribution of grades that these pupils are far from helpless in regard to the ability required to do school work in general.

GRADES OF THE FAILING PUPILS IN THE SEMESTER NEXT PRECEDING THE FAILURES

Total A B C D

13,857 Boys 315 2883 6668 3991 17,264 Girls 245 2868 9509 4642

Per Cent of Total 1.8 18.5 52.0 27.7

GRADES OF THE FAILING PUPILS IN THE SEMESTER NEXT SUCCEEDING THE FAILURES

Total A B C D

14,724 Boys 319 2772 7406 4227 16,942 Girls 281 2788 9114 4759

Per Cent of Total 1.9 17.7 52.1 28.3

More than 20 per cent of the grades in the former and nearly 20 per cent of the grades in the latter distribution are A's or B's, 52 per cent more in each case are given a lower pa.s.sing grade, while approximately 28 per cent in each distribution have failing grades.

Though some tendency toward a continuity of failures is apparent, there is also evident a p.r.o.nounced tendency in the main for pupils to succeed. That these same pupils could do better is not open to doubt.

Teachers in two of the larger schools a.s.serted that with many pupils a kind of complacency existed to feel satisfied with a C, and to consider greater effort for the sake of higher pa.s.sing marks as a waste of time.

Such pupils openly advocate a greater number of subjects with at least a minimum pa.s.sing mark in each, in preference to fewer subjects and the higher grades, which they claim count no more in essential credit than a lower pa.s.sing grade. That att.i.tude may account for some of the low marks as well as for some of the failures shown above, even though the pupils may possess an abundance of mental ability.

Still another element, apart from the real ability of the pupils, which is contributory to school failures is found in punitive marking or in the giving of a failing grade for disciplinary effect. It is probably a relatively small element, but it is difficult to establish any certain estimate of its amount. Numerous teachers are ready to a.s.sert its reality in practice. Two cases came directly to the author's personal attention by mere chance--one, by the frank statement of a teacher who had used this weapon; another, by the ready advice of an older to a younger teacher, in the midst of recording marks, to fail a boy "because he was too fresh." The advice was followed. Such a practice, however prevalent, is intolerable and indefensible. If the school failure is to be administered as a retaliation or convenience by the teacher, how is the moral or educational welfare of the pupil to be served thereby? It is certain to be more efficacious for vengeance than for purposes of reforming the individual if employed in this way. The Regents' rules take recognition of this inclination toward a perversion of the function of examination by forbidding any exclusion from Regents' examinations as a means of discipline. Many teachers cultivate a finesse for discerning weaknesses and faults, without perceiving the immeasurable advantage of being able to see the pupils' excellences. In one school there was employed a plan by which a percentage discount was charged for absence, and in some instances it reduced a pa.s.sing mark to a failing mark. This comes close to the a.s.signment of marks of failure for penalizing purposes, which is unjustified and vicious.

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 princ.i.p.als, 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 cla.s.sed 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 apt.i.tudes and capacities of some portion of those pupils. As a result an acc.u.mulation 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.