Classification of Pupils 199 



teacher responsible, for the shortcomings of 

 his pupils. 1 



In every elementary school a certain number 

 of the pupils respond readily to the instruction 

 given them; these lads in after-life will prob- 

 ably become skilled workmen and earn a fairly 

 competent living wage. A much larger propor- 

 tion of the lads attending the school are more 

 or less inattentive, slow to learn, their instinc- 

 tive qualities dominating their behaviour; in 

 after-life they take to various kinds of low- 

 class labour which, if they are physically strong, 

 enables them to earn fairly good wages during 

 prosperous times; otherwise, especially in un- 

 seasonable weather, they have great difficulty 

 in making both ends meet. Then we have a 

 third class of lads who are slow to learn, stupid, 

 and troublesome to manage; these are those 

 who in after-life drift from one job to another, 

 too many of them passing sooner or later into 

 the class of the unemployed, with all its atten- 

 dant misery. Of the seventy-one boy labourers 

 whose histories Mr. Freeman records, twenty- 



1 The Story of an Irish Sept, by a Member of the Sept (N. C. 

 Macnamara), p. 13. See also The Ancient Laws of Ireland, 

 Vol. II., p. 155. 



