The High School Failures by Francis P. Obrien

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We must take into account at the very beginning the fundamental truth
stated by Thorndike,[54] that "achievement is a measure of ability only
if the conditions are equal." Corollary to that is the fact that the
same uniform conditions and requirements are often very unequal as
applied to different individuals. The equalization of educational
opportunity does not at all mean the same duplicated method or content
for all. That interpretation will controvert the very spirit and
purpose of the principle stated. Any inflexible scheme which attempts
to fashion all children into types, according to preconceived notions,
and whose perpetuity is rooted in a psychology based on the uniformity
of the human mind, simply must give way to the newer conception which
harmonizes with the psychic laws of the individual, or else continue to
waste much time and energy in trying to force pupils to accomplish
those things for which they have neither the capacity nor the
inclination. It is accordingly obligatory on the school to give
intelligent and responsive recognition to the wide differentiation of
social demands, and to the extent and the continuity of the individual
differences of pupils.

1. ORGANIZATION AND ADAPTATION IN RECOGNITION OF THE INDIVIDUAL
DIFFERENCES IN ABILITIES AND INTERESTS

If the school failures are to be substantially reduced, the teaching of
the school subjects with the chief emphasis on the pupil must surely
replace the practice of teaching the subjects primarily for their own
sake. This 'subject first' treatment must give place to the 'pupil
first' idea. No subject then will overshadow the pupil's welfare, and
the pupil will not be subjected to the subject. Education in terms of
subject-matter is well designed to produce a large crop of failures.
Neither the addition or subtraction of subjects is urged primarily,
but the adaptation and utilization of the school agencies so as to make
the pupils as efficient and as productive as possible, by recognizing
first of all their essential lack of uniformity in reference to
capacities and interests,--not only as between different individuals,
but in the same individual at different ages, at different stages of
maturity, and in different kinds of subjects. This conception precludes
the school employment of subjects and methods for all alike which are
obviously better adapted to the younger than to the older. Neither does
it overlook the fact that the attitude of more mature pupils toward
authority and discipline is essentialy different from that of the
younger boys and girls; that a subject congenial to some pupils will be
intolerable and nearly if not quite impossible for others; or that an
appeal designed mainly to reach the girls will not reach boys equally
well. In brief, the treatment proposed here is neither radical nor
novel, but it is simply the institution of applied psychology as
pertaining to school procedure. What the more modern experimental
psychology has established must be utilized in the school, at the
expense of the more obsolete and traditional. Psychology now generally
recognizes the existence of what the general school procedure implies
does not exist, namely, the wide range of individual differences.

The situation clearly demands that our public schools shall not, by
clinging to precedent and convention, fall notably behind industry and
government in appropriating the fruits of modern scientific research.
As the doctor varies the diet to the needs of each patient and each
affliction, so must the school serve the intellectual and social needs
of the pupils by such an organization and attitude that the selection
of subjects for each pupil may take an actual and specific regard of
the individual to be served. The change all important is not
necessarily in the school subject or curriculum, but rather a change in
the attitude as to how a subject shall be presented--to whom and by
whom. The latter will also determine the character of the pupil's
response and the subject's educational value to him. By securing a
genuine response from the pupils a subject or course of study is
thereby translated into pupil achievement and human results. The
authority of the school is impotent to get these results by merely
commanding them or by requiring all to pursue the same subject. An
experience, in order to have truly educational value, must come within
the range of the pupils comprehension and interest. Quoting Newman,[55]
"To get the most out of an experience there must be more or less
understanding of its better possibilities. The social and ethical
implications must somewhere and at some time be lifted very definitely
into conscious understanding and volition." The pupil's responsiveness
is then much more important both for securing results and for reducing
failures than is any subject content or method that is not effective in
securing a tolerable and satisfying sort of mental activity.

2. FACULTY STUDENT ADVISERS FROM THE TIME OF ENTRANCE

Not only the failure of pupils in their school subjects but the failure
also of 13 per cent of them to remain in school even to the end of the
first semester, or of 23.1 per cent to remain beyond the first semester
(Tables V and VI)--of whom a relatively small number had failed (about
1/4)--make a strong appeal for the appointment of sympathetic and helpful
teachers as student advisers from the very time of their entrance. One
teacher is able to provide personal advice and educational guidance for
from 20 to 30 pupils. The right type of teachers, their early
appointment, and the keeping of some sort of confidential and
unofficial record, all seem highly important.

Superintendent Maxwell mentioned among the reasons why pupils leave
school[56] that "they become bewildered, sometimes scared, by the
strange school atmosphere and the aloofness of the high school
teachers." There is a strangeness that is found in the transition to
high school surroundings and to high school work which certainly should
not be augmented by any further handicap for the pupil. There are no
fixed limitations to what helpfulness the advisers may render in the
way of 'a big brother' or 'big sister' capacity. It is all incidental
and supplementary in form, but of inestimable value to the pupils and
the school. A further service that is far more unusual than difficult
may be performed by the pupils who are not new, in the way of removing
strangeness for those who are entering what seems to them a sort of new
esoteric cult in the high school. The girls of the Washington Irving
High School[55] of New York City recently put into practice a plan to
give a personal welcome to each entering girl, and a personal escort
for the first hour, including the registration and a tour of the
building, in addition to some friendly inquiries, suggestions, and
introductions. The pupil is then more at home in meeting the teachers
later. Here is the sort of courtesy introduced into the school that
commercial and business houses have learned to practice to avoid the
loss of either present or prospective customers. Some day the school
must learn more fully that the faith cure is much cheaper than surgery
and less painful as well.

3. GREATER FLEXIBILITY AND DIFFERENTIATION REQUIRED

The recognition of individual differences urged in section 1
necessitates a differentiation and a flexibility of the high school
curriculum that is limited only by the social and individual needs to
be served, the size of the school, and the availability of means. The
rigid inflexibility of the inherited course of study has contributed
perhaps more than its full share to the waste product of the
educational machinery. The importance of this change from compulsion
and rigidity toward greater flexibility has already received attention
and commendation. One authority[57] states that "one main cause of
(H.S.) elimination is incapacity for and lack of interest in the sort
of intellectual work demanded by the present courses of study," and
further that "specialization of instruction for different pupils within
one class is needed as well as specialization of the curriculum for
different classes." There must be less of the assumption that the
pupils are made for the schools, whose regime they must fit or else
fail repeatedly where they do not fit. Theoretically considerable
progress has already been made in the differentiation of curricula, but
in practice the opportunity that is offered to the pupils to profit
thereby is curtailed, because of the rigid organization of courses and
the uniform requirements that are dictated by administrative
convenience or by the college entrance needs of the minority. The only
permissible limitations to the variables of the curriculum should be
such as aim to secure a reasonable continuity and sequence of subjects
in one or more of the fields selected. One of the chief barriers to a
more general flexibility has been the notion of inequality between the
classical and all other types of education. This assumption has had its
foundations heavily shaken of late. The quality of response which it
elicits has come to receive precedence over the name by which a subject
happens to be classified. "France has come out boldly and recognized at
least officially the exact parity between the scientific education and
the classical education."[58] Indeed one may doubt whether this parity
will ever again be seriously questioned, because of the elevation of
scientific training and accomplishment in the great world wars as well
as in its adaptation for the direct and purposeful dealing with the
problems of modern life. Especially for the early classes in the high
school does the situation demand a relatively flexible curriculum, else
the only choice will be to drop out to escape drudgery or failure.
Inglis maintains that the selective function of the high school may
operate by a process of differentiation rather than by a wholesale
elimination.[59] The pupil surely cannot know in advance what he is
best fitted for, but the school must help him find that out, if it is
to render a very valuable service, and one at all comparable to the
success of the industrial expert in utilizing his material and in
minimizing waste. The junior high school especially aims to perform
this function that is so slighted in the senior high school. Yet
neither the organization nor the purpose of the two are so far apart as
to excuse the helplessness of the latter in this important duty.

There is apparently no constitutional impediment to a still further
extension of the principle of flexibility and to the minimizing of loss
by what has been a costly trial and error method of fitting the pupils
and the subjects to each other. Short unit courses are not unfamiliar
in certain educational fields, and they lend themselves very readily to
definite and specific needs. Their usefulness may be regarded as a
warrant of a wider adoption of them. Although they are as yet employed
mainly for an intensive form of training or instruction to meet
specific needs of a particular group in a limited time,[60] the
principle of their use is no longer novel. A unit course of an
extensive nature is also conceivable, for instance, a semester of any
subject entitled to two credits might allow a division into two
approximately equal portions. If then both teacher and pupil feel, when
one unit is completed, that the pupil is in the wrong subject or that
his work is hopeless in that subject, he might be permitted to
withdraw and be charged with a failure of only one point, that is, just
one-half the failure of a semester's work in the subject--or one-fourth
that for a whole year with no semester divisions. Even if this scheme
would not work equally well in all subjects, it implies no extensive
reorganization to employ it in the ones adapted. It is not incredible
that, as the people more generally understand that physics, chemistry,
and biology have become vital to national self-preservation and social
well-being, their emphasis as subjects required or as subjects sought
by most of the pupils may lead to a high percentage of failures, such
as is found for Latin and mathematics usually, or for science as
reported in St. Louis, where it was required of all and yielded the
highest percentage of failures. Now the teaching of most sciences by
the unit plan will comprise no greater difficulty than is involved in
overcoming text-book methods and the conservatism of convention. The
project device, as employed in vocational education, will also lend
itself in many instances to the unit division of work. The first
consequence of this plan will be a reduction of failures for the pupil
in those subjects whose continued pursuit would mean increased failure.
The second consequence may be to relieve teachers of hopeless cases of
misfit in any subject, for if the pupils no longer have intolerable
subjects imposed on them the teachers will come to demand only
tolerable work in the subjects of their choice. The third consequence
will probably be to encourage pupils to find themselves by trying out
subjects at less risk of such cumulative failures as are disclosed in
section 3 of the preceding chapter.

4. PROVISION FOR THE DIRECTION OF THE PUPILS' STUDY

The forms of treatment suggested in the first three sections of this
chapter for the diminution of failures will find their natural
culmination of effectiveness in a plan for helping the pupils to help
themselves. This has been notably lacking in most school practice.
Every improvement of the school adaptation still assumes that the
pupils are to apply themselves to honest, thorough study. But the high
school must bear in mind that good studying implies good teaching. It
cannot be trusted to intuition or to individual discovery. Real,
earnest studying is hard work. The teachers have usually presupposed
habits of study on the part of the pupils, but one of the important
lessons for the school to teach the pupil is how to use his mind and
his books effectively and efficiently. Even the simplest kinds of
apprenticeship instruct the novice in the use of each device and in the
handling of each tool to a degree which the school most often
disregards when requiring the pupil to use even highly abstract and
complex instrumentalities. The practice of the school almost glorifies
drudgery as a genuine virtue. E.R. Breslich refers to this fact,[61]
saying, "so it happens that the preparation for the classwork, not the
classwork itself burdens the lives of the pupils." The indefensibleness
of the indiscriminate lesson giving consists in the fact that it is not
the load but the harness that is too heavy. The harness is more
exhausting and burdensome than the load appointed. The destination
sought and the course to be followed in the lesson preparation are very
many times not clearly indicated, lest the discipline, negative and
repressive though it be, should be extracted from the struggle. The
fact is that discouragement and failure are too often the best of
testimony that teachers are not much concerned about how the pupil
employs his time or books in studying a lesson. The point is
illustrated admirably by the report in the _Ladies Home Journal_, for
January, 1913, of a request from a hardworking widow that the teacher
of one of her children in school try teaching the child instead of just
hearing the lessons which the mother had taught.

Directing the pupils' study is sometimes regarded as a more or less
formalized scheme of organization and procedure, which requires extra
time, extra teachers, and a lesser degree of independence on the part
of the pupils. But here too the important things are differentiation
and specific direction as adapted to the needs of the subject, the
topic or the pupils. It must be insisted that supervised study is not
the same thing in all schools, in all subjects, or for all pupils. In
other words, its very purpose is defeated if it is overformalized. An
experiment is reported by J.H. Minnick with two classes in plane
geometry,[62] of practically the same size, ability, and time allowance
for study, which indicated that the supervised pupils were the less
dependent as judged by their success in tests consisting of new
problems. The pupils also liked the method, in spite of their early
opposition, and no one failed, while two of the unsupervised class
failed. William Wiener also speaks of the wonderful self-control which
springs from the supervised study program.[63] As to the need of extra
teachers for the purpose there is not much real agreement, since the
plans of adaptation are so different in themselves. Increased labor for
the same teachers will rightly imply greater renumeration. Colvin makes
mention of the additional expense imposed by the larger force of
teachers required.[64] But J.S. Brown finds that the failures are so
largely reduced that with fewer repeaters there is a consequent saving
in the teaching force.[65] With a faculty of 66 teachers, he reports 38
classes in which there was no failure, and a marked reduction of
failures in general by the use of supervised study. It is interesting
and significant to note here that by allowing 100 daily pupil
recitations to the teacher the repeated subjects reported in this study
would require 87 teachers for one semester or 11 teachers for the full
four years. This fact represents more than $50,000 in salaries alone.
Buildings, equipment, heat, and other expenses will more than double
the amount. But such expense is incomparable with what the pupils pay
in time, in struggles, and in disappointment in order to succeed later
in only 66.7 per cent of the subjects repeated. As none of the eight
schools provided anything more definite than a general after school
hour for offering help, and which often has a punitive suggestion to
it, the possibility of saving many of these pupils from failure and
repetition by the wise and helpful direction of their study is simply
unmeasured. A conclusion that is particularly encouraging is reported
by W.C. Reavis to the effect that the poorer pupils--the ones who most
need the direction--are the ones that supervised study helps the
most.[66] There is nothing novel in saying that good teaching and good
studying are but different aspects of the same process, but it would be
an innovation to find this conception generally realized in the school
practice.

5. A GREATER RECOGNITION AND EXPOSITION OF THE FACTS AS REVEALED BY
ACCURATE AND COMPLETE SCHOOL RECORDS

It is unfortunate that the detailed and complete records which tell the
whole story about the failures in the school and for the individual are
found in relatively few schools, even when on all sides business
enterprises find a complete system of detailed records, filed and
indexed, altogether indispensable for their intelligent operation and
administration. The school still proceeds in its sphere too much by
chance and faith, forgetting mistakes and recalling successes. This is
possible because there is no question of self-support or of solvency to
face, and because neither the teachers nor the institution are in
danger of direct financial loss by their waste, duplication, or
failures. In the absence of records it is always possible to calmly
assume that the facts are not so bad as for other schools which do
report their recorded facts. The prevailing unfamiliarity with
statistical methods may also favor a skepticism as to their proper
application to education, since it is not an exact science. But the
fact remains established that it is always possible to measure
qualitative differences if stated in terms of their quantitative
amounts.

Admirable and complete as are the records for the many schools of the
minority group possessing them, their more general value and
information are still quite securely hidden away in the files which
contain them. Peculiarly interesting was the surprise expressed by the
principals at the extensive and significant information which their own
school records provided, when they received individual reports on the
data collected and tabulated for this study. Yet they received only the
portions of the tabulations which seemed most likely to interest them.
The principals do not have the time or the assistance to study in a
collective way the facts which are provided by their own records, but
they are entitled to much credit for so courteously cooperating with
any competent person for utilizing their records for approved purposes
and in turn sharing their results with the school. To proceed wisely in
the administration of the school we must have a chance to know and
discuss the facts. It is not possible to know the facts without
adequate records. The absence of evidence gives prominence to opinion
and precedent. Accordingly, it is entirely incredible that the number,
the repetition, and the accumulation of failures would remain unchanged
after a fair exposition and discussion of the evidence presented in a
collective and comprehensive form. It may be necessary to admit that a
few teachers will hold opinions so strong that they will discredit all
testimony not in support of such opinions. But the high school
teachers in general seem fairly and earnestly disposed, even about
revising their notions concerning the truth in any situation. In regard
to the relative number and time of the failures, the actual and
relative success in repeated work, the advantage of repetition for
later work, the relation of success to the size of the schedule, the
influence of the number of failures on graduation, and numbers of other
vital facts, it could be said of the teachers in general that they
simply knew not what they were doing. They even thought they were doing
what they were not. The school records must be disclosed and utilized
more fully if their value and importance are to be realized. It will be
a large source of satisfaction if this report helps to direct attention
to the official school records, from which a frequent 'trial balance'
will help to rectify and clarify the school practice. Both are needed.

SUMMARY OF CHAPTER VII

The contributing factors found in the school must first be remedied,
before responsibility for the failures can be fairly apportioned to the
pupils.

The provision of uniform conditions for all is based on the false
doctrine of the uniformity of the human mind. Such conditions may prove
very unequal for some individuals, and achievement is not then a real
measure of ability.

By applying a functioning psychology to school practice, more
adaptation and specialization are required to meet the individual
differences of pupils.

No change of subjects is in general necessitated, but a change of the
attitude which subjects pupils to the subjects seems essential.

The genuineness of the pupil's response depends on the pupil and the
subject. A policy of coercion will usually beget only dislike or
failure.

Properly selected student advisers, appointed early, may transform the
school for the pupil, save the pupil for the school, and his work from
failures.

A relatively high degree of flexibility and specialization of the
curriculum will help the pupil find what he is best fitted for, and
thereby minimize waste. This will include a virtual parity between the
classical and scientific subjects.

The reduction of some subjects to smaller units will tend to facilitate
flexibility and a reduction of failures.

The provision of directed study will help the pupils to help
themselves. Good teaching demands it. The harness is often heavier than
the load. Failures are inevitable.

The plan of study direction must be varied according to the varying
needs of pupils, subjects, and schools. The poorer pupils are aided
most. They are made even more reliant on themselves. The reduction of
failures tends to balance any added expense.

Records adequate and complete should be a part of the business and
educational equipment of every school. The exposition and use of these
facts as recorded will then give direction to school progress, and
dethrone the authority of assumption and opinion.

REFERENCES:

54. Thorndike, E.L. _Individuality_, pp. 38, 51.

55. Neuman, H. _Moral Values in Secondary Education_, United States
Bureau of Education Bulletin, No. 51, 1917, pp. 18, 17.

56. Maxwell, W.H. _A Quarter Century of Public School Development_,
p. 89.

57. Thorndike, E.L. _The Elimination of Pupils from School_, U.S.
Bureau of Education Bulletin, No. 4, 1907, p. 10.

58. Farrington, F.E. _French Secondary Schools_, p. 124.

59. Inglis, A. _Principles of Secondary Education_, p. 669.

60. Committee of N.E.A. _Vocational Secondary Education_, U.S. Bureau
of Education Bulletin No. 21, 1916, p. 58.

61. Breslich, E.R. _Supervised Study as Supplementary Instruction,
Thirteenth Yearbook_, p. 43.

62. Minnick, J.H. "The Supervised Study of Mathematics," _School
Review_, 21-670.

63. Wiener, W. "Home Study Reform," _School Review_, 20-526.

64. Colvin, S.S. _An Introduction to High School Teaching_, p. 366.

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