The junior high school especially aims to perform this function that is so slighted in the senior high school. Yet neither the organization nor the purpose of the two are so far apart as to excuse the helplessness of the latter in this important duty. There is apparently no constitutional impediment to a still further extension of the principle of flexibility and to the minimizing of loss by what has been a costly trial and error method of fitting the pupils and the subjects to each other. Short unit courses are not unfamiliar in certain educational fields, and they lend themselves very readily to definite and specific needs. Their usefulness may be regarded as a warrant of a wider adoption of them. Although they are as yet employed mainly for an intensive form of training or instruction to meet specific needs of a particular group in a limited time,[60] the principle of their use is no longer novel. A unit course of an extensive nature is also conceivable, for instance, a semester of any subject entitled to two credits might allow a division into two approximately equal portions. If then both teacher and pupil feel, when one unit is completed, that the pupil is in the wrong subject or that his work is hopeless in that subject, he might be permitted to withdraw and be charged with a failure of only one point, that is, just one-half the failure of a semester's work in the subject--or one-fourth that for a whole year with no semester divisions. Even if this scheme would not work equally well in all subjects, it implies no extensive reorganization to employ it in the ones adapted. It is not incredible that, as the people more generally understand that physics, chemistry, and biology have become vital to national self-preservation and social well-being, their emphasis as subjects required or as subjects sought by most of the pupils may lead to a high percentage of failures, such as is found for Latin and mathematics usually, or for science as reported in St. Louis, where it was required of all and yielded the highest percentage of failures. Now the teaching of most sciences by the unit plan will comprise no greater difficulty than is involved in overcoming text-book methods and the conservatism of convention. The project device, as employed in vocational education, will also lend itself in many instances to the unit division of work. The first consequence of this plan will be a reduction of failures for the pupil in those subjects whose continued pursuit would mean increased failure. The second consequence may be to relieve teachers of hopeless cases of misfit in any subject, for if the pupils no longer have intolerable subjects imposed on them the teachers will come to demand only tolerable work in the subjects of their choice. The third consequence will probably be to encourage pupils to find themselves by trying out subjects at less risk of such cumulative failures as are disclosed in section 3 of the preceding chapter.