5. THE PROGNOSIS OF FAILURES BY THE SUBJECT SELECTION
From the distribution of failures by school subjects as presented in
Chapter II, this will seem to be the easiest and almost the surest of
all the factors thus far considered to employ for a prognosis of
failure. For of all pupils taking Latin we may confidently expect an
average of a little less than one pupil in every five to fail each
semester. For the entire number taking mathematics, the expectation of
failure is an average of about one in six for each semester. German
comes next, and for each semester it claims for failure on the average
nearly one pupil in every seven taking it. Similarly French claims for
failure one in every nine; history, one in every ten; English and
business subjects, less than one in every twelve. It will be noted that
the average on a semester basis is employed in this part of the
computation. Consequently, it is not the same as saying that such a
percentage of pupils fail at some time, in the subject. The pupil who
fails four times in first year mathematics is intentionally regarded
here as representing four failures. Likewise, the pupil who completes
four years of Latin without failure represents eight successes for the
subject in calculating these percentages. Every recorded failure for
each pupil is thus accounted for.
It was also noted in Chapter II that the percentages of the total
failures run higher in mathematics, Latin, history, and science, for
the graduates than for the non-graduates.
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