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.
2. THE EMPLOYMENT OF THE SCHOOL ENTERING AGE FOR PROGNOSIS
A promising but less emphasized basis of prognosticating the school success or failure of the pupils is found in the employment of the school entering ages for this purpose. The distribution of all the pupils (except 30 undistributed ones, for whom the records were incomplete), according to entering age, is here presented, independently for the boys and for the girls.
DISTRIBUTION OF PUPILS BY THEIR ENTRANCE AGES TO HIGH SCHOOL
| AGES | Undis- | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | tributed |
| 2646 B. | 16 | 211 | 820 | 900 | 497 | 148 | 23 | 10 | 7 | 14 |
| 3495 G. | 8 | 259 | 1124 | 1217 | 614 | 194 | 51 | 10 | 8 | 16 |
The entering ages of these 6,141 pupils are distributed from 12 to 20, with 30 of them for whom the age records were not given. The median age for all the entrants is 15.3. But in order to compare this with the median entering age (14.9) of the 1,033 pupils reported by King[21] for the Iowa City high school, or with the median entering age (14.5) of 1000 high school pupils in New York City, as reported by Van Denburg,[22a] it is necessary to reduce these medians to the same basis of age classification. Since age 15 for this study starts at 141/2, then 15.3 would be only 14.8 (15.3-.5) as by their classification. The percentages of the total number of pupils for each age are given below.
PERCENTAGES OF PUPILS FOR EACH ENTERING AGE
| AGES | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 20 | |
| Undistributed | ||||||||
| Total | 0.4 | 7.6 | 31.6 | 34.4 | 18.1 | 5.5 | 1.2 | 1.0 |
| Boys | 0.6 | 8.0 | 31.0 | 37.8 | 18.8 | 5.6 | 0.8 | 1.1 |
| Girls | 0.2 | 7.4 | 32.4 | 34.8 | 17.5 | 5.5 | 1.4 | 1.0 |
We see that 84 per cent of the pupils enter at age 14, 15, and 16, or, what is perhaps more important, that nearly 40 per cent enter under 15 years of age. The similarity of percentages for boys and for girls is pronounced. The slight advantage of the boys for ages 12 and 13 may be due to home influence in restricting the early entrance of the girls, thus causing a corresponding superiority for the girls at age 14. The mode of this percentage distribution is at 15 for both boys and girls.