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. Again, the
success with which these pupils carry a schedule of five or six
subjects, besides other work not recognized in the treatment of this
study, and retrieve themselves in the unattractive subjects of failure
pleads for a recognition of their ability and enterprise. Their
difficulty is without doubt frequently more physiological than
psychological, except as they are the victims of a false psychology,
that either disregards or misapplies the principles which Thorndike
terms the law of readiness[50] to respond and the law of effect, and
consequently depend largely on the one law of exercise of the function
to secure the desired results.

Some additional evidence that the failing pupils can and do succeed in
most of their subjects is provided by their earlier and later records,
as disclosed by the total grades received for the semester first
preceding and the one next following that in which the failure occurs.
There were of course no preceding grades for the failures that occur in
the first semester, and none succeeding those that occur in the last
semes