roportions
and becomes truly appalling.

What does it mean? Why, it means, in terms of the school man,
retardation and elimination. To the layman those words may need
interpretation. Retardation means the checking of a pupil in his
educational progress thru the grades, necessitating the spending of a
longer period than that which is considered normal. For example, a
normal pupil is one who enters school at six years of age and is
promoted each year regularly; or "a pupil whose age and grade correspond
to this standard." Thus, the standard age for a second grade pupil,
during the year, is 7 years; for a fourth grade, 9 years; and for an
eighth grade, 13 years; or in every case, five more than the number of
his grade. If one is older than the number of his grade plus five, he is
retarded by the amount of the difference; thus a twelve-year-old child
in the sixth grade is retarded one year since a sixth-grade child should
be but eleven years old. Somehow he has lost a year. Thru failure to do
satisfactory work such a child has had to repeat the work of some one of
his grades. Elimination means the dropping out of a child from school
altogether before the regular course is completed. We find relatively
little elimination in the lower grades since the compulsory attendance
laws require attendance. But just as soon as the upper limit of age is
reached there is much of it.

I do not know how closely you have followed this matter of retardation
in the schools and elimination from them, but I think sufficiently to
render it unnecessary for me to discuss the matter at length. Let me
refer to but one study which is typical as showing the seriousness of
the situation. In 1907, Mr. S. L. Heeter, at that time Superintendent of
Schools in St. Paul, Minnesota, working under instruction of his Board
of School Inspectors, made a very careful investigation as to the matter
of retardation in the schools of that city. You may be surprised to
learn some of the results. He found more than one-half, exactly 56%, of
all the children in the schools at least one year behind normal grade,
and many of them much more than one year behind. To be exact: 12,672
children were below grade. Of these, 6,328 were one year behind; 3,650
were two years behind; 1,689 were three years behind; 651 were four
years behind; 221 were five years behind, and 133 were six years behind.
Now, what is the cause of such a serious situation? Mr. Heeter, in his
report of hi