Surely one finds in the preceding pages rather slight grounds to warrant the almost unqualified faith in repetition such as the school practice exhibits (Table X), or in the importance of the particular subjects so repeated.  There may be evidence in this faith and practice of what Snedden[43] calls the “undue importance attached to the historic instruments of secondary education ... now taught mainly because of the ease with which they can be presented ... and which may have had little distinguishable bearing on the future achievement of those young people so gifted by nature as to render it probable that they should later become leaders.”  But such instruments will not lack direct bearing on the productions of failures for pupils whose interests and needs are but remotely served by such subjects.

A recent ruling in the department of secondary education,[44] in New York City, denies high school pupils permission “to repeat the same grade and type of work for the third consecutive time” after failing a second time.  And further it is prescribed that “students who have failed twice in any given grade of a foreign language should be dropped from all classes in that language.”  Our findings in this study will seem to verify the wisdom of these rulings.  Another ruling that “students who have failed successfully four prepared subjects should not be permitted to elect more than four in the succeeding term,” or if they “have passed four subjects and failed in one,” should be permitted to take five only provisionally, seems to judge the individual’s capacities pretty much in terms of failure.  We have found that for approximately 4,000 repetitions with an extra schedule, however or by whomever they may have been determined, the percentage getting A’s and B’s was higher and the percentage of failing was substantially lower than for approximately 4,700 repetitions with only three or four subjects for each schedule.  It does not appear that the number of subjects is uniformly the factor of prime importance, or that such a ruling will meet the essential difficulty regarding failure.  The failure in any subject will more often tend to indicate a specific difficulty rather than any general lack of ‘ability plus application’ relative to the number of subjects.  The maladjustment is not so often in the size of the load as in the kind or composition of the load for the particular individual concerned.  The burden is sometimes mastered by repeated trials.  But often the particular adjustment needed is clearly indicated by the antecedent failures.

2.  DISCONTINUANCE OF SUBJECT OR COURSE, AND THE SUBSTITUTION OF OTHERS