NO.  OF                   Grades              No              Per Cent
REPET.            A     B       C      D     Grade   Totals    Failing
1   Boys      62    532    1727    880     216     3117
Girls     80    702    2329   1180     342     4633       32.5
2   Boys       1     15     106     77       3      202
Girls      3     17     154     89       2      265       36.6
3   Boys      ..      0      26     33       0       59
Girls     ..      5      19     36       3       63       59.0
4   Boys      ..     ..       4     11      ..       15
Girls     ..     ..       8     25      ..       33       75.0
5   Boys      ..     ..      ..      2      ..        2
Girls     ..     ..      ..      5      ..        5      100.0
6   Boys      ..     ..      ..      0      ..        0
Girls     ..     ..      ..      2      ..        2      100.0
Tot.   Boys      63    547    1863   1003     219     3695
Girls     83    724    2510   1337     347     5001

Although a smaller number of pupils make each higher number of repetitions, a higher percentage of each successive group meets with final failure in the subject repeated, and the facts are indicative of what should be expected however large the numbers making such multiplied repetitions.  It seems almost incredible that pupils should anywhere be required or permitted to make the fourth, fifth, or sixth repetition of subjects so manifestly certain of leading to further disappointment.  It must be understood, too, that five and six repetitions means six and seven times over the same school work.  The existence of such a situation testifies to a sort of deep-seated faith in the dependence of the pupil’s educational salvation on the successful repetition of some particular school subject.  It shows no recognition that the duty of the school is to give each pupil the type of training best suited to his individual endowments and limitations, and at the same time in keeping with the needs of society.  Such indiscriminate repetition becomes a matter of thoughtless duplicating and operates, first, to increase the economic, educational, and human waste, where the school is especially the agency charged with conserving the greatest of our national resources.  Second, it operates to fix more permanently the habit and attitude of failing for such pupils, and bequeaths to society the fruit of such maladjustments, which cannot fail to function frequently and seriously in the production of industrial dissatisfactions and misfits later in life.  Such probabilities are merely in keeping with the psychological fact that habits once established are not likely to be easily lost.  Indiscriminate repetition is an expensive way of failing to do the thing which it assumes to do.