Why Don’t We Need Perfect Attendance in Schools?
When your child is picking up that award in his school for perfect attendance, you may not exactly be considering the flipside of the whole scenario. Perfect Attendance!!! The word itself accommodates a range of possibilities – and that of course transcend classroom. Here you have got a student who is not only acing school lessons but also the challenges that come with attending school at the first place. Sickness, unavoidable situations at home, accidents and what not! Perfect attendance quite effortlessly backs images of healthy students with fairly unperturbed family lives (that’s perhaps the reason why there are no apparent family troubles keeping them away from school) well on their way to achieving academic excellence.
Is Perfect Attendance Required?
However, let us tell you that perfect attendance in school does come with its own set of demerits as well. This is the reason why it has been opined that schools should do away with the idea of perfect attendance – even workplaces. Students aiming for that perfect attendance award actually grow up imbibing the idea that only showing up will do. And, how well do we know that it’s not true? Isn’t it?
While regularity in school, colleges, universities and workplaces is absolutely important – the very valorizing of 100% attendence should be strictly done away with. There are times when students are particularly pursuing that flawless attendance record and of course the reward that follows. Perfect attendance cannot necessarily be equated with academic excellence. We have already told you how students often grow up mistaking “responsibility” for “presence in the classroom”.
What have we failed to Realize in our Quest for the Banal Rewards?
What more? There are times when students actually end up ignoring illness for attending classes just because they want that award at the end of the year. This practice is essentially unhealthy and hazardous for their health. And, why only students? The parents are often to be blamed as well. Their constant efforts to push their children to schools – even at the cost of their health – are delusional to say the least. What are they trying to achieve? Why would they want their children to run after perfect attendance? How purposeful is the pursuit? Why would they want their children to grow up believing that regularity is even more important than their health?
Regularity is Important
Regularity in school in fact is a way more serious proposition than those glossy awards that children of some of the most elite schools pick up every year. In fact, you can say that classroom regularity is equivalent to academic excellence when it is accompanied by due attentiveness and a meaningful urge to train oneself for excellent performance. Please remember that you are not required to pick up the 100% attendance reward every year for academic glory – just as you are not required to earn consistent high grades to achieve professional success.
So, those US schools distributing iPads and bikes to perfect attendees better pay attention to what the educators have to say now.
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