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.
The success of the failing pupils in passing the Regents' examinations
does not give endorsement 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 passing 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 pronounced 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 asserted 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 passing marks as a waste of time.
Such pupils openly advocate a greater number of subjects with at least
a minimum passing mark in each, in preference to fewer subjects and the
higher grades, which they claim count no more in essential credit than
a lower passing grade. That attitude 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
assert 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 passing mark to
a failing mark. This comes close to the assignment 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 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.
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.
The pupils who lack native ability sufficient for the work are not a
large number.
The high school graduates represent about a 1 in 9 selection of the
elementary school entrants, but in this group is included as high a
percentage of the failing pupils as of the non-failing ones.
The success of the failing pupils in the Regents' examinations, and
also in their repeating with extra schedules, bears witness to their
possession of ability and industry.
In the semester first preceding and that immediately subsequent to the
failure, 72 per cent of all the grades are passing, 20 per cent are A's
or B's. Many of them "can if they will."
The early elimination of pupils, the number that fail, and the notable
cases of non-success in school are evidence of something wrong with the
kind of education.
The characteristic culmination of failures for Latin and mathematics
can hardly be considered a part of the pupils' responsibility.
Of all the failures 68.5 per cent are incurred by instances of two or
more failures in the same subject.
Much maladjustment of the subject assignments is almost inevitable by a
prescribed uniformity of the same content and the same treatment for
all.
The traditional methods and emphasis probably account for more
disappointment and disgust than for valuable discipline.
REFERENCES:
47. Maxwell, W.H. _A Quarter Century of Public School Development_, p.
88.
48. Van Denburg, J.K. _The Elimination of Pupils from Public Secondary
Schools_, p. 183.
49. Annual Report of the U.S. Commissioner of Education, 1917.
50. Thorndike, E.L. _Educational Psychology_, Vol. II, Chap. I.
51. Swift, E.J. _Mind in the Making_, Chap. I.
52. Thorndike, E.L. _Elimination of Pupils from School_, U.S. Bull. 4,
1907.
53. Meredith, A.B. _Survey of the St. Louis Public Schools_, 1917, Vol.
III, pp. 51, 40.