To state that fact more
specifically, 68.5 per cent of the total 17,960 failures involved in
this study are made by two or more failures in the same subject, while
31.5 per cent of the failures belong to a more promiscuous and varied
collection of failures, of not more than one in any subject. It will be
noted here that some subjects do not have a greater continuity than one
year or even one semester on the school program. Such subjects provide
the least possibility of successive failures in the same field. A
further analysis shows that the failures incurred by three or more
instances occurring in the same subject form 33.6 per cent of the
entire number; and that 18 per cent of the total is comprised of four
or more instances of failure in the same subject. There is small
probability that such a multiplication of failures by subjects will
characterize the subjects which are least productive of failures in
general, and such is not the case in fact. Latin and mathematics are
again the chief contributors, and this would seem to be a fact also for
those schools quoted from outside of this study, for purposes of
comparison in Chapter II.
The above distribution speaks with graphic eloquence of how the school
tends to focus emphasis on the subject prescribed and then to demand
that the pupil be fitted or become fitted to the courses offered. Such
heaping up of failures will more likely mark those subjects which seem
to the pupil to be furthest from meeting his needs and appealing to his
interests.
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