A similar situation is evidenced by the
percentage of failure in science as reported for the St. Louis high
school in Chapter II. A year of physics had been made compulsory for
all, and taught in the second year.[53] Its percentage of failures
accordingly mounts to the highest place. Mr. Meredith, who conducted
that portion of the survey, rightly regards the policy as a mistake,
and recommends that the needs of individual pupils be considered.
It is indeed striking how failures of the pupils are grouped under
particular subjects of difficulty, and how the pupils fail again and
again in the same general subject. No educational expert would seem to
be needed to diagnose a goodly number of these chronic cases of failing
and to detect a productive source of the whole trouble if only the
following distribution were presented to him.
DISTRIBUTION OF PUPILS ACCORDING TO THE NUMBER OF TIMES THEY HAVE
FAILED IN THE SAME SUBJECT
No. of
Times 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14
Boys 2852 1416 425 196 73 25 2 4 1 1 1 0 1
Girls 2812 1722 501 250 98 31 7 8 3 1 0 3 0
By 'same subjects' the same general divisions are designated, as
English, Latin, mathematics. We may be led to note first that a major
portion of the above distribution of pupils belongs to those who fail
but once in the same subject; but then we note that by far the greater
number of failures comprised by that distribution belong to those who
fail two or more times in the same subject.
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