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

TotalABCD
13,857 Boys315288366683991
17,264 Girls245286895094642
Per Cent of Total1.818.552.027.7

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

TotalABCD
14,724 Boys319277274064227
16,942 Girls281278891144759
Per Cent of Total1.917.752.128.3

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.