Abstract
The purpose of this study is to clarify what the actual practices were during the Taisho Era (1912-1926) in relation to having students repeat grades in school, and the relation between problems associated with repeating grades and the establishment of special classes for students who are underachieving. Specifically, this article reports a case study of one school, U Elementary School in Niigata prefecture. In this school, a special class for children who were called "rettoji" was established in 1923. This school was listed in the Ministry of Education's 1924 report "The National Status of Special Education". At U Elementary School, the old school registers have been preserved, and it was possible to locate in them the names of many students who had repeated grades. We analyzed the contents of these registers to clarify how the practice of having students repeat grades was actually used during that period, and investigated the relationship between problems related to repeating grades and establishment of the special class. The results were as follows; 1. Many students repeated grades in the first decade of the Taisho Era (1912-1921) at this school. 2. The grade most commonly repeated was the first grade; next most common were fifth and sixth grades. Almost all students who repeated lower grades were later promoted to the higher grades, but many students in the higher grades later left school. 3. Some children were exempted from school education during the year in which they were repeating a grades. Many of these children were underachievers because of having an intellectual disability. 4. Arithmetic was the most difficult subject for the students who repeated grades. But the criteria used to decide whether a student would repeat a grade were the average of the student's marks in all subjects, the mark in deportment, and the rate of absenteeism. 5. Problems of low achievement, which were behind the many students who repeated grades at this school, were mainly caused by the poor educational conditions of this school and the living conditions of the children in this district. 6. In 1923, a special class was established at this school to deal with the problems of low achievement. 7. When the special class was established, the criteria used to decide whether a student would repeat a grade were changed. Generally speaking, at the end of the Taisho Era (in the mid-1920s), there was an attempt to educate children according to their ability. Consequently, the criteria used to decide whether a student would repeat a grade were changed, and the number of students who repeated grades decreased.
