THE DURATION OF SCHOOL ATTENDANCE IN CHI¬ 
CAGO AND MILWAUKEE. 
(WITH diagram—PLATE I.) 
DANIEL FOLKMAR. 
IMPORTANCE OF THE QUESTION. 
Is not the question of all questions in education how to retain 
our pupils through more years of schooling? If it can be shown 
that pupils reach, on the average, only the third or fourth grade 
before dropping out, have we not missed the most essential 
point by putting the great emphasis now-a-days upon methods? 
Is not the real question, not how shall we teach, but how much 
shall we teach? If the average pupil has only time allowed him 
to acquire the elements of the three “ R’s, ” have we not erred 
in crowding them aside by “ enriching the curriculum ” with 
nature study and other new applicants for favor? Has not Dr. 
Harris rightly interpreted the needs of civilization in his restora¬ 
tion of reading, writing, and arithmetic to the leading place in 
the course of study? 1 
These fundamental questions depend so largely upon the act¬ 
ual amount of schooling that we can count upon in the case of 
the average child, that much effort would be justified in attempt¬ 
ing to determine the latter. There is probably nowhere in edu¬ 
cational literature a scientific demonstration of the number that 
drop permanently out of school at the close of each grade. 
The aim of this paper is indicated above. It is to ascertain 
at what grade the pupils in the public schools drop out — what 
per cent, go no further than the first grade, what per cent, stop 
with the second grade, what per cent, with the primary school, 
1 “Report of the Committee of Fifteen ” in the Proceedings of the Na¬ 
tional Educational Association, 1895, pp. 290-6. 
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