1. ATTENDANCE, MENTAL OR PHYSICAL DEFECTS, AND SIZE OF CLASSES ARE POSSIBLE FACTORS
Any definite factors available for the school that have a prognostic value in reference to school failures will help to perform a function quite comparable to the science of preventive medicine in its field, and in contrast with the older art of doctoring the malady after it has been permitted to develop. Such prognostication of failure, however, need not imply a complete knowledge of the causes of the failures. It may simply signify that in certain situations the causes are less active or are partly overcome by other factors.
Perhaps one of the simplest factors with a prognostic value on failure may be found in the facts of attendance. Persistent or repeated absence from school may reach a point where it tends to affect the number of failures. It happened, unfortunately, that the reports for attendance were incomplete or lacking in a considerable portion of the records employed in this study. Consequently the influence of attendance is given no especial consideration in these pages, except as explained in [Chapter I], that the pupil must have been present enough of any semester to secure his subject grades, else no failure is counted and no time is charged to his period in school. In this connection, Dr. C.H. Keyes[14] found in a study of elementary school pupils that of 1,649 pupils losing four weeks or more in a single year 459 belonged to the accelerate pupils, 647 to those arrested, and 543 to pupils normal in their school work. He accredits such large loss of time as almost invariably the result of illness and of contagious disease. He also says, "Prolonged absence from school is appreciable in producing arrest especially when it amounts to more than 25 days in one school year." But the diseases of childhood, with the resultant absence, are less prevalent in the high school years than earlier. Furthermore, the losses due to change of residence will not be met with here, for, as explained in [Chapter I], no transferred pupils are included subsequent to the time of the transference either to or from the school.
The influence of physical or mental defects also deserves recognition here as a possible factor relative to school failures, although this study has no data to offer of any statistical value in that regard. A few pupils in high school may actually reach the limits prescribed by their 'intelligence quotient'[15] or general mental ability, or perhaps, as Bronner[16a] so interestingly points out, be handicapped by some special mental disability. If such be true, they will doubtless be found in the number of school drop-outs later referred to as failing in 50 per cent or more of their work; but we have no measurement of intelligence recorded for them to serve our purposes of prognostication. In the matter of physical defects alone, the report of Dr. L.P. Ayres[17] on a study of 3,304 pupils, ten to fourteen years old, in New York City, states that "In every case except in that of vision the children rated as 'dull' are found to be suffering from physical defects to a greater degree than 'normal' or 'bright' children." The defects of vision, which is the exception noted, may be even partly the result of the studious habits of the pupils. Bronner[16b] remarks on the "relationships between mental and physical conditions," and also on how "the findings on tests were altogether different after the child had been built up physically." But Gulick and Ayres[18] conclude that it is evident from the facts at hand that if vision were omitted the percentage of defects would dwindle and become comparatively small among the upper grades. This would probably be still more true for the high school; but this whole field has not yet been completely and thoroughly investigated.
It would be very desirable to have ascertained the size of the classes in which the failures were most frequent, as well as the relative success of the pupils repeating subjects in larger or in smaller classes. But, as such facts were unobtainable, it is permitted here simply to recognize the possible influence of this factor. It seems deserving in itself of careful and special study. From the standpoint of the pupil, the kind of subject, the kind of teacher, and the sort of discipline employed will tend to influence the size of class to be called normal, and to make it a sort of variable. Thirty pupils is regarded by the North Central Association as the maximum size of class in high school.[19] Surely the size of class will react on the pupil by affecting the teacher's spirit and energy. Reference is made by Hall-Quest[20] to an experiment, whose author is not named, in which 829 pupils stated that their "most helpful teachers were pleasant, cheerful, optimistic, enthusiastic, and young." If such be true then the very large size of classes will tend to reduce the teacher's helpfulness.