296 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
How one of three things must happen. The repeaters must 
make up that lost year by extra work, which very few can or 
do do, or they must spend one extra year in completing the 
course, or they must drop out without fully completing the 
course, and in the latter two cases, handicapped to that extent, 
go to life’s economic efforts. But wdiether poorly prepared or 
not, the year is lost. According to the report of the National 
Commissioner of Education for 1907 there were 17,061,962 
pupils, urban and rural, in the school of the country. On the 
Minnesota basis of repeaters, 7.4% of that number is 1,262,585 
pupils. On the Ayres basis of 15.4% the number would be 
2,627,542 pupils. That is significant. Every year we lose in 
human energy the equivalent of from 1,262,585 to 2,627,542 
years of work. Allowing thirty years to be the average work¬ 
ing life of a man, then this loss equals the absolute perishing 
from the face of the earth of from 42,086 to 87,584 men an¬ 
nually. That is a serious drain upon the resources of the na¬ 
tion. It is more than a mere school problem. It becomes a 
national, economic problem of great magnitude. 
Estimating roughly, Minnesota thus loses annually, in the 
time lost by her repeaters, and amount of time equal to the 
active working life of about 842 men on the 7.4% basis. 
The figures showing cost in money and in time will vary ac¬ 
cording to the method of approaching the problem, but even 
these general and varying computations are sufficient to con¬ 
vince one that there is a crying necessity for such a study of the 
problem as may lead to changes that will amount to a remedy. 
What are the schools doing to correct the evil? Practically 
nothing as yet. These evils are the product, or a by-product, of 
the present system. Evidently there must be changes in the 
course of study and in the organization of the system. Some 
new solution must be worked out. 
Some Constructive Remedies. 
It is relatively easy to find out the extent of this evil; also 
to approximate its causes, but it is not so easy to suggest con¬ 
structive remedies. And admittedly there must be a reason- 
