1. SOME ARE EVIDENTLY MISFITS

There is a strong presumption that many of the 485 pupils who failed in 50 per cent of their school work and dropped out (reported in [Chapter IV]) represent misfits for at least the kind of school subjects offered or required. One cannot say that even hopeless failing in any particular subject is a safe criterion of general inability, or that failure in abstract sort of mental work would be a sure prophecy of failure in more concrete hand work. It is altogether probable that some of the individuals in the above number were not endowed to profit by an academic high school course, and that others were the restless ones at a restless age, who just would not fit in, whatever their abilities. But even of these pupils a considerable number display sufficient resourcefulness to satisfy many of their failures and to persist in school two, three, or four years. There are perhaps at least a few others who, without failing, drop out early, prompted by the conviction of their own unfitness to succeed in the high school. Yet collectively this group is by no means a large one. This conclusion is in harmony with the judgment of former Superintendent Maxwell, of New York City,[47] who stated that "the number of children leaving school because they have not the native ability to cope with high school studies, is, in my judgment, small." Likewise Van Denburg[48] reached the conclusion that "at least 75 per cent of the pupils who enter (high school) have the brains, the native ability to graduate, if they chose to apply themselves." With many who fail not even is the application lacking, as the facts of [section 2] will seem to prove.

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