of the fault lies with the kind of education given in the United
States." Some of the facts for those are not eliminated so early are
still more definitely indicative that something is wrong with the kind
of education given, as the facts of the following section seem to point
out.

3. THE SCHOOL EMPHASIS AND THE SCHOOL FAILURES ARE BOTH CULMINATIVE IN
PARTICULAR SCHOOL SUBJECTS

As soon as we find any subject forced upon all pupils alike as a school
requirement we may be quite sure that it will not meet the demands of
the individual aptitudes and capacities of some portion of those
pupils. As a result an accumulation of failures will tend to mark out
such a uniformly required subject, whether it be mathematics, science
or Latin. It was pointed out in section 4 of Chapter II that Latin and
mathematics, although admittedly in charge of teachers ranking with the
best, have both a high percentage of the total failures and the highest
percentage of failures reckoned on the number taking the subject. In
both regards there is a heaping up of failures for those two subjects,
but furthermore there is an arbitrary emphasis culminating in these two
subjects beyond any others excepting that English is a very generally
required subject. In reference to these two required subjects the
pupils who graduate are not more successful than those who do not. When
the emphasis is on the teaching of the subject rather than on the
teaching of the pupil there is no incongruity in making the subject a
requirement for all, but both are incongruous with what psychology has
more lately recognized and pointed out as to the wide range of
individual differences. A similar situation is evidenced by the
percentage of failure in science as reported for the St. Louis high
school in Chapter II. A year of physics had been made compulsory for
all, and taught in the second year.[53] Its percentage of failures
accordingly mounts to the highest place. Mr. Meredith, who conducted
that portion of the survey, rightly regards the policy as a mistake,
and recommends that the needs of individual pupils be considered.

It is indeed striking how failures of the pupils are grouped under
particular subjects of difficulty, and how the pupils fail again and
again in the same general subject. No educational expert would seem to
be needed to diagnose a goodly number of these chronic cases of failing
and to detect a productive source of the whole trouble if only the
follo