He
found that discouragement, loss of interest, and disappointment affect
more pupils than all the other causes combined. Likewise Bronner
notes[37] that the 'irrational' sameness of school procedure for all
pupils often leads to "serious loss of interest in school work,
discouragement, truancy, and disciplinary problems." Still it may be
that the worst consequences of multiplied failures are not to those
dropping out. W.D. Lewis observes[38] that the failing pupil "speedily
comes to accept himself as a failure," and that "the disaster to many
who stay in the schools is greater than to those who are shoved out."
To the same point Hanus tells[39] us that "during the school period
aversion and evasion are more frequently cultivated than power and
skill, through the forced pursuit of uninteresting subjects." A pupil
who acquires the habit of failing and the attitude of accepting it as a
necessary evil may soon give up trying to win and become satisfied to
accept himself as less gifted, or even to accept life in general as
necessarily a matter of repeated failures. In a similar connection,
James E. Russell says,[40] "the boy who becomes accustomed to second
place soon fails to think at his best." Such psychological results in
regard to habits and attitude accruing from repeated failures are both
certain and insidious. And an education which purports to be for all
and to offer the highest training to each must abandon the inculcation
of attitudes of mind so detrimental to the individual and to the very
society which educates him.
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