by
failing it is evident that it does not operate to cause their early
loss to the school in nearly all of these instances. It may be noted
here that it is difficult to find any justification for allowing or
forcing these pupils to endure two, three, or four years of a kind of
training for which they have shown themselves obviously unfitted. To be
sure, they have satisfied a part of these failures by repetitions or
otherwise, but only to go on adding more failures. A device of
'superannuation' is employed in certain schools by which a pupil who
has failed in half of his work for two semesters, and is sixteen years
of age, is supposed to be dropped automatically from the school. This
device seems designed to evade a difficulty in the absence of any real
solution for it, and harmonizes with the school aims that are
prescribed in terms of subject matter rather than in terms of the
pupils' needs. From the standpoint of the individual pupil his peculiar
qualities are not likely to be fashioned to the highest degree of
usefulness by this procedure. It simply serves notice that the pupil
must make the adjustment needed, as the school cannot or will not.

Notwithstanding the testimony furnished by the accumulation of failures
shown in Table IX, there are grounds for believing that for the major
portion of all the non-graduates the number of failures is not a prime
nor perhaps a highly important cause of their dropping out of school.
This conviction seems to be substantiated by the statement of
percentages below.

THE PERCENTAGE OF NON-GRADUATES WHO DROP OUT WITH

0 1 or 0 2 or fewer 3 or fewer 4 or fewer 5 or fewer
Failures Failures Failures Failures Failures Failures

41.8 50.6 60.7 69.2 76.4 80.8

The fact that nearly 81 per cent of the non-graduates have only 5
failures or less, taken in comparison with the fact that approximately
one fourth of the failing graduates have 8 or more failures, argues
that the number of failures alone can hardly be considered one of the
larger factors in causing the dropping out. In a report concerning the
working children of Cincinnati, H.T. Wooley remarks[33] that
"two-thirds of our children leaving the public schools are the
failures." This seems to suppose failing a large cause of the dropping
out. But this investigation of failure indicates that the percentage of
failure for those leaving is no high