2.  The meaning of ‘failure’ in this study

The term ‘failure’ is employed in this study to signify the non-passing of a pupil in any semester-subject of his school work.  The school decision is not questioned in the matter of a recorded failure.  And although it is usually understood to negate “ability plus accomplishment,” it may, and undoubtedly does, at times imply other meanings, such as a punitive mark, a teacher’s prejudice, or a deferred judgment.  The mark may at times tell more about the teacher who gave it than about the pupil who received it.  These peculiarities of the individual teacher or pupil are pretty well compensated for by the large number of teachers and of pupils involved.  The decisive factor in this matter is that the school refuses to grant credit for the work pursued.  The failure for a semester seems to be a more adaptable unit in this connection than the subject-failure for a year.  However, it necessitates the treatment of the subject-failure for a year as equivalent to a failure for each of the two semesters.  Two of the schools involved in this study (comprising about 11 per cent of the pupils) recorded grades only at the end of the year.  It is quite probable that the marking by semesters would actually have increased the number of failures in these schools, as there are many teachers who confess that they are less willing to make a pupil repeat a year than a semester.

By employing this unit of failure, the failures in the different subjects are regarded as comparable.  Since only the academic and commercial subjects are considered, and since they are almost uniformly scheduled for four or five hours a week, the failures will seem to be of something near equal gravity and to represent a similar amount of non-performance or of unsatisfactory results.  There were also a few failures included here for those subjects which had only three hours a week credit, mainly in the commercial subjects.  But failures were unnoted when the subject was listed for less than three hours a week.

There are certain other elements of assumption in the treatment of the failures, which seemed to be unavoidable.  They are, first, that failure in any subject is the same fact for boys and for girls; second, that failures in different years of work or with different teachers are equivalent; third, that failures in elective and in required subjects are of the same gravity.  It was found practically impossible to differentiate required and elective subjects, however desirable it would have been, for the subjects that are theoretically elective often are in fact virtually required, the electives of one course are required in another, and on many of the records consulted neither the courses nor the electives are clearly designated.

3.  The scope and content of the field covered