=============================================== QUALITY OF PENMANSHIP GRADES 5 6 ----------------------------------------------- _No. of Pupils_ Rated at 4 5 6 Rated at 5 1 1 Rated at 6 0 0 Rated at 7 2 4 Rated at 8 10 4 Rated at 9 12 1 Rated at 10 3 6 Rated at 11 3 8 Rated at 12 3 3 Rated at 13 1 2 Rated at 14 1 1 Rated at 15 0 1 Rated at 16 1 1 Rated at 17 0 0 Rated at 18 0 0 =============================================== Results similar to those recorded above will be found if any accurate measurement is made of the knowledge possessed by children in history or in geography, or of the ability to apply or derive principles in physics or in chemistry, or of the knowledge of vocabulary in Latin or in German, and the like. All such facts indicate clearly the necessity for differentiating our work for the group of children who are classified as belonging to one grade. Under the older and simpler form of school organization, the one-room rural school, it was not uncommon for children to recite in one class in arithmetic, in another in geography or history, and in possibly still another in English. In our more highly organized school systems, with the attempt to have children pass regularly from grade to grade at each promotion period, we have in some measure provided for individual differences through allowing children to skip a grade, or not infrequently by having them repeat the work of a grade. In still other cases an attempt has been made to adapt the work of the class to the needs and capacities of the children by dividing any class group into two or more groups, especially in those subjects in which children seem to have greatest difficulty. Teachers who are alive to the problem presented have striven to adjust their work to different members of the class by varying the assignments, and in some cases by excusing from the exercises in which they are already proficient the abler pupils.