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.
Pages:
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135