Readjustments of the Curriculum
There are other and more fundamental remedies for some of the evils of the graded system. The curriculum can be readjusted. Where any considerable number of pupils fail in a particular subject, it is highly probable that the material of instruction or the method of presentation or both ought to be modified. In some cases pupils ought to be taken out of the regular grades and treated as special cases. The city of Cincinnati was a pioneer in recognizing the need of special curricula for special types of pupils. The whole country has in recent years come to recognize the importance of taking children who are mentally backward or slow out of the grades. Less commonly there is a recognition of the importance of specially arranged courses for the bright pupils.
In the city of St. Louis the curriculum of each grade is administered in units of ten weeks for each section. At the end of each ten weeks a readjustment is possible so that the bright pupils may go forward and the slow pupils may proceed more deliberately. There are at the end of each period of ten weeks a number of promotions which carry individual pupils forward two quarters. The curriculum is so arranged that a rapidly promoted pupil does not omit any essential part of the subjects, while the slow pupil has ample opportunity for drill and review.
The grading of the material used in instruction in particular subjects has also been recognized as a problem of the first importance. One of the most thoroughly studied subjects is spelling. Ayres[38] took the thousand words which several investigations had shown to be the most commonly used in ordinary life and tried them out on the pupils of eighty-four cities. As a result of those trials he is able to state that a certain list of words will be spelled with a given percentage of error by pupils of the third grade and with a less percentage of error by pupils of the fourth, fifth, and higher grades. Thus the material of instruction in spelling is graded, not by arbitrarily selecting what the teacher thinks will be appropriate, but by trying out the actual ability of pupils in eighty-four cities.