happens to be classified.  “France has come out boldly and recognized at least officially the exact parity between the scientific education and the classical education."[58] Indeed one may doubt whether this parity will ever again be seriously questioned, because of the elevation of scientific training and accomplishment in the great world wars as well as in its adaptation for the direct and purposeful dealing with the problems of modern life.  Especially for the early classes in the high school does the situation demand a relatively flexible curriculum, else the only choice will be to drop out to escape drudgery or failure.  Inglis maintains that the selective function of the high school may operate by a process of differentiation rather than by a wholesale elimination.[59] The pupil surely cannot know in advance what he is best fitted for, but the school must help him find that out, if it is to render a very valuable service, and one at all comparable to the success of the industrial expert in utilizing his material and in minimizing waste.  The junior high school especially aims to perform this function that is so slighted in the senior high school.  Yet neither the organization nor the purpose of the two are so far apart as to excuse the helplessness of the latter in this important duty.

There is apparently no constitutional impediment to a still further extension of the principle of flexibility and to the minimizing of loss by what has been a costly trial and error method of fitting the pupils and the subjects to each other.  Short unit courses are not unfamiliar in certain educational fields, and they lend themselves very readily to definite and specific needs.  Their usefulness may be regarded as a warrant of a wider adoption of them.  Although they are as yet employed mainly for an intensive form of training or instruction to meet specific needs of a particular group in a limited time,[60] the principle of their use is no longer novel.  A unit course of an extensive nature is also conceivable, for instance, a semester of any subject entitled to two credits might allow a division into two approximately equal portions.  If then both teacher and pupil feel, when one unit is completed, that the pupil is in the wrong subject or that his work is hopeless in that subject, he might be permitted to withdraw and be charged with a failure of only one point, that is, just one-half the failure of a semester’s work in the subject—­or one-fourth that for a whole year with no semester divisions.  Even if this scheme would not work equally well in all subjects, it implies no extensive reorganization to employ it in the ones adapted.  It is not incredible that, as the people more generally understand that physics, chemistry, and biology have become vital to national self-preservation and social well-being, their emphasis as subjects required or as subjects sought by most of the pupils may lead to a high percentage of failures, such as is found for Latin and mathematics usually,