Although a smaller number of pupils make each higher number of repetitions, a higher percentage of each successive group meets with final failure in the subject repeated, and the facts are indicative of what should be expected however large the numbers making such multiplied repetitions. It seems almost incredible that pupils should anywhere be required or permitted to make the fourth, fifth, or sixth repetition of subjects so manifestly certain of leading to further disappointment. It must be understood, too, that five and six repetitions means six and seven times over the same school work. The existence of such a situation testifies to a sort of deep-seated faith in the dependence of the pupil's educational salvation on the successful repetition of some particular school subject. It shows no recognition that the duty of the school is to give each pupil the type of training best suited to his individual endowments and limitations, and at the same time in keeping with the needs of society. Such indiscriminate repetition becomes a matter of thoughtless duplicating and operates, first, to increase the economic, educational, and human waste, where the school is especially the agency charged with conserving the greatest of our national resources. Second, it operates to fix more permanently the habit and attitude of failing for such pupils, and bequeaths to society the fruit of such maladjustments, which cannot fail to function frequently and seriously in the production of industrial dissatisfactions and misfits later in life. Such probabilities are merely in keeping with the psychological fact that habits once established are not likely to be easily lost. Indiscriminate repetition is an expensive way of failing to do the thing which it assumes to do.
Surely one finds in the preceding pages rather slight grounds to warrant the almost unqualified faith in repetition such as the school practice exhibits ([Table X]), or in the importance of the particular subjects so repeated. There may be evidence in this faith and practice of what Snedden[43] calls the "undue importance attached to the historic instruments of secondary education ... now taught mainly because of the ease with which they can be presented ... and which may have had little distinguishable bearing on the future achievement of those young people so gifted by nature as to render it probable that they should later become leaders." But such instruments will not lack direct bearing on the productions of failures for pupils whose interests and needs are but remotely served by such subjects.
A recent ruling in the department of secondary education,[44] in New York City, denies high school pupils permission "to repeat the same grade and type of work for the third consecutive time" after failing a second time. And further it is prescribed that "students who have failed twice in any given grade of a foreign language should be dropped from all classes in that language." Our findings in this study will seem to verify the wisdom of these rulings. Another ruling that "students who have failed successfully four prepared subjects should not be permitted to elect more than four in the succeeding term," or if they "have passed four subjects and failed in one," should be permitted to take five only provisionally, seems to judge the individual's capacities pretty much in terms of failure. We have found that for approximately 4,000 repetitions with an extra schedule, however or by whomever they may have been determined, the percentage getting A's and B's was higher and the percentage of failing was substantially lower than for approximately 4,700 repetitions with only three or four subjects for each schedule. It does not appear that the number of subjects is uniformly the factor of prime importance, or that such a ruling will meet the essential difficulty regarding failure. The failure in any subject will more often tend to indicate a specific difficulty rather than any general lack of 'ability plus application' relative to the number of subjects. The maladjustment is not so often in the size of the load as in the kind or composition of the load for the particular individual concerned. The burden is sometimes mastered by repeated trials. But often the particular adjustment needed is clearly indicated by the antecedent failures.
2. DISCONTINUANCE OF SUBJECT OR COURSE, AND THE SUBSTITUTION OF OTHERS
Earlier in this chapter appears the number and percentage of failures whose disposition was effected by discontinuance or by substitution. Twenty-four and five-tenths per cent of the failures were accounted for in this way. This grouping happens to be a rather complex one. Many of such pupils simply discontinue the course and then drop out of school. Some discontinue the subject but because they have extra credits take no substitute for it; others substitute in a general way to secure the needed credits but not specifically for the subject dropped. Only a few shift their credits to another curriculum. In some instances the subject is itself an extra one, and needs no substitute. For the graduating pupils only about 5 per cent of the failures are disposed of by discontinuing and by substitution of subjects. This fact may be due to the greater economy in examinations, or to the relatively inflexible school requirements for completing the prescribed work by repetition whether for graduation or for college entrance. In only one school was there a tendency to discontinue the subject failed in. So far as failures represent a definite maladjustment between the pupil and the school subject, the substitution of other work would seem to be the most rational solution of the difficulty.
A consideration of the success following a substitution of vocational or shop subjects, to replace the academic subjects of failure, offers an especially promising theme for study. No opportunity was offered in the scope of this study to include that sort of inquiry, but its possibilities are recognized and acknowledged herein as worthy of earnest attention. In only two of the eight schools was any shop-work offered, and only one of these could probably claim vocational rank. Apart from the difficulty in reference to comparability of standards, there were not more than a negligible number of cases of such substitution, due partly to the relative recency in the offering of any vocational work. In this reference a report comes from W.D. Lewis of an actual experiment[45] in which "fifty boys of the school loafer type ... selected because of their prolific record in failure—as they had proved absolute failures in the traditional course—were placed in charge of a good red-blooded man in a thoroughly equipped wood work shop." "The shop failed to reach just one." At the same time the academic work improved. One cannot be sure of how much to credit the type of work and how much the red-blooded man for such results. But we may feel sure of further contributions of this sort in due time.
3. EMPLOYMENT OF SCHOOL EXAMINATIONS
The school examinations employed to dispose of the failures are of two types. The 'final' semester examination, employed by certain schools and required of pupils who have failed, operates to remove the previous failure for that semester of the subject. The success of this plan is not high, because of the insufficient time available to make any adequate reparation for the failures already charged. Of the 1,657 examinations of this kind to satisfy for failures, 30.7 per cent result in success. The boys are more successful than the girls by 4.5 per cent. This particular procedure is not employed by more than two of the eight schools. The other form of school examination employed for disposing of failures is the special examination, usually following some definite preparation, and given at the discretion of the teacher or department head. Its employment seems also to be limited pretty much to two of the schools, because for most of the subjects the Regents' examinations tend to displace it in the schools of the New York State and City systems. As only the successes were sure of being recorded in these tests we do not know the percentage of success attributable to this plan of removing failures. It probably deserves to be credited with a fairly high degree of success, for relatively few pupils (less than 200) utilize it, and then frequently after some extra preparation or study—such as summer school courses or tutoring. These two forms of school examinations jointly yield 37.5 per cent of successes on the number attempted, so far as such are recorded.