788 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIV. No. 884 



compute it from the number of repeaters. 

 Here no confusion results over the question of 

 their age at entrance nor the age limits proper 

 for each grade. Elimination works confusion 

 here as well as by the first method tried. And 

 we must bear in mind that repeaters are only 

 one year's contribution to the full army of 

 retarded children. Financially it is only dur- 

 ing the time he repeats that the retarded child 

 costs the taxpayer anything. 



In order to ascertain at first hand the 

 amount of repeating in the schools of Minne- 

 sota, I recently sent out a printed question- 

 naire to all the superintendents in the state. 

 Ninety-six, which is nearly half, replied 

 promptly with well-arranged data. 



The figures given include a total of 40,710 

 grade children and 8,302 high-school students. 

 To this number we might add about 28,000 

 pupils in the grade and high schools of St. 

 Paul which are not included in the main re- 

 sults. That makes a total of 77,012 children 

 investigated as to the repeating among them. 



The number of children repeating the work 

 of their grade for this year was found to be 

 as follows: 



Grades 



1st 2d 3d 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th Total 

 664 309 296 374 396 330 318 443 3,130 



Also, 168 others are repeating the work for 

 the second time. 



And in the high schools 981 are repeating 

 one subject; 335, two subjects; 108, three sub- 

 jects, and 60 all four subjects. That is equal 

 to a total of 2,214 in single subjects, or, 

 dividing by four, the number of subjects usu- 

 ally carried by a high school student, we have 

 the equivalent of 553 high school students 

 repeating full work. 



This is 7.4 per cent, of the total enrollment 

 in the 96 systems. But this does not ade- 

 quately measure the ground lost last year in 

 these schools, for two reasons. First, the 

 statistics being gathered in the fall from the 

 actual enrollment of the schools and not com- 

 piled from office records does not account for 

 the number of students who dropped out dur- 

 ing the summer, and the number thus elim- 

 inated must be considerable. Second, and this 



is an important factor, never alluded to, so far 

 as I have discovered, in the literature of the 

 subject, there is a practise, almost uniform 

 among superintendents, of promoting a child 

 at the end of two years in a given grade, 

 whether his work merits it or not. This prac- 

 tise conceals a considerable amount of the very 

 worst sort of repeating, and likewise, by 

 forcing the child on through the grades, 

 whether deserving or not, reduces the apparent 

 amount of retardation. Akin to this practise 

 is another which has the same efl'ects, of pro- 

 moting " on trial " children who do not quite 

 meet the requirements, but for one reason or 

 another are permitted to continue on with the 

 class. And need it be added that when once 

 a child has been allowed to go on with the class 

 he is rarely reduced to the grade below, no 

 matter how poor his work? 



The data show 1,612 children promoted on 

 trial ; there are no figures for the number arbi- 

 trarily promoted at the end of the second year 

 in the grade. It is certain that these two 

 practises reduce the actual number of repeat- 

 ing and retarded children considerably. 



Compared with Ayres's Results. — While my 

 figures show a considerably larger percentage 

 of retarded children, those of Ayres, curiously 

 enough, show in the fifty-five leading cities 

 given in his tabulated report, that the average 

 percentage of repeaters is 15.4. That is due, 

 I think, to the fact that his method conceals 

 part of the retardation but not of the repeat- 

 ing. Eepeating is high in the large cities. 

 If repeating is high retardation should be. 



Having carefully studied the laggards in our 

 Minnesota schools from two standpoints, it is 

 interesting to note how strikingly the results 

 agree. We found the percentage of retarda- 

 tion to be 58.9 and that of repeaters to be 7.4. 

 Now, bearing in mind that the number of 

 repeaters is merely one year's quota of re- 

 tarded ones, and multiplying 7.4 by eight, the 

 number of years in the grade course, we have 

 59.2 as the calculated number of laggards. 

 The ascertained number is only .3 of one per 

 cent, less than this. 



The Money Cost of the Laggards. — School 

 administrators and the public generally would 



