After much discussion, we fixed upon 13 years as the age for transition to senior high school. We came to this largely as a result of our pooled professional experience, but not wholly on that basis. We gave considerable weight to the follow-up study of pupils identified in 1922, and kept together for three years in special classes at Public School 165, Manhattan. [5] There were 56 of these children whom we promoted to the ninth grade at an average age of 11 years; and the high-school careers of all of them were followed through sixteen different high schools. [6] In the course of this follow-up, the question was repeatedly asked, "What would be the best age to enter the ninth grade?"
Sixty per cent of these pupils gave 13 years as the "best age" to enter high school, and twenty-six per cent gave 14 years or older. Only one child gave an age younger than 12 years as optimum for entering high school. This group, as a whole, would have preferred to enter the ninth grade at an age older than that at which they entered, and gave cogent reasons for the preference during their high-school careers.
These ideas persisted through the college careers, especially among the boys, many of whom felt they were misplaced in college at 15 years of age. Entering high school near the thirteenth birthday, a child saves time, and yet is not made subject to the tensions which may result from trying to meet social and physical requirements for which he is too immature.
Junior high school is omitted from the picture as ours was a five-year plan. Such a plan of curriculum enrichment as ours fits best into the 8B setup, for such a program cannot be supervised if the pupils are scattered and the situation made subject to the transition from 6B to junior high school. In the metropolitan situation it is not feasible to take the pupils for special classes until they are at least 7 years old. The infrequency of their occurrence makes it necessary to assemble them from several districts, and they are not mature enough to come from a distance when they are 6 years of age. Parents cannot assume the burden of accompanying them twice a day. Our pupils were 8 years old, on the median, when they entered our rapid learner classes.