294 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
upon this point as follows: “And if, perchance, you attend a 
teachers’ association, or read the printed proceedings thereof, 
yen will he impressed, I am sure, by the frank and fearless way 
in which the shortcomings, as well as the successes, of the schools 
are discussed as to both matter and methods. What for? 
Simply to learn how to make them better, and thus render a 
larger social service.” 
The child, too, is scarcely responsible for “mental incapacity” 
or “home conditions” though he may be to a degree for irregular 
attendance. The extent of the time lost by non-attendance 
may he indicated by the statement that schoolmen consider 150 
days out of the 180 days that schools are in session, a good aver¬ 
age attendance for each child. That much loss is calculafed 
for in arranging the course of study and planning promotion. 
The Money Cost of Repeating. 
Vast sums are lost to the country yearly because of repeating. 
We recognize that not every child who repeats represents a 
money loss for in a small system especially, he may he merely 
added to the number coming from the grade below and the only 
extra cost he will, in that case, represent will he the supplies 
used. But in the larger systems where new rooms are being 
opened constantly, half-day sessions held, new buildings erected, 
and where the plant is never quite adequate to care for the chil¬ 
dren, then and there the repeater because he spends one more 
year than he ought, in the schools, adds one-eighth of the total 
cost of educating him every time he repeats a grade. The exact 
cost can never be arrived at with mathematical exactness, but 
some calculations cannot fail to cast light on the enormous pos¬ 
sibilities of the evil. 
In fifty-five large cities, studied by Ayres, with an average 
enrollment of 34, 687 for each city, he found 15.4 of all the 
pupils to be repeating their work. He figures the cost of the 
repeaters to be $13,705,464, to those cities. That is an aver¬ 
age of $43.92 per child. In St. Paul the estimated cost of re¬ 
peaters for one year is $67,000. 
Our findings for Minnesota show a much smaller number of 
repeaters than do the large cities studied by Ayres, and that is 
