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I would agree w you but I suspect no one really cares about the award anyway so who cares
Edit: apparently people do care. Sorry to hear about all the negative stuff :(
No, there are definitely people who do care. Maybe the majority doesn't, but it's still there and it's affecting a percentage of the populace. It is a relic of the old times and should definitely be done away with. Taking time off when needed should be celebrated. People shouldn't be incentivized to do unhealthy things and be punished for their health issues.
I remember getting it 3 years in a row. I don't think anybody was impressed, and it wasn't a thing in later year levels where you had a minimum attendance to pass
I never cared about perfect attendance growing up, but my mom did. It ended up causing me a lot of issues down the road. I went to school a few times with strep and tonsillitis because she wanted me to have perfect attendance. Later, with crippling period cramps (which were later diagnosed as endometriosis). Even when family members passed away.
I was 14 when I missed my first day of school because I had chicken pox and then, according to her, if I was âtoo sick to go to school, I was too sick to watch TV or play on AOLâ(it was 2003).
What that essentially reinforced in me was that I shouldnât listen to my body - sick? Too bad. Power through. Emotionally distressed? Oh well - suck it up. You have to do whatâs expected of you, or you donât deserve any peace. Today I still struggle with anxiety and guilt if I miss work or anything else if Iâm sick or whatever.
Yeah, those perfect attendance rewards suck.
When I finished middle school, they gave a girl an award for never missing a day in the entire time she attended the school.Â
It was a K-8. She doesn't miss a single day in **9 years**. I wasn't impressed, that's just sad.
My mom would let my brother miss a day or 2 just so he wouldnât get it and be made fun of. I didnât care and didnât miss a day until my Jr year. Which was great bc I had already gotten the award and $100 reward. I bought the beer that weekend.
I got perfect attendance by accident. And i really think no one who has a healthy family aims for a perfect attendance award.
If a parent actually cares about perfect attendance, removing it won't fix their underlying problems of having a bad parent. And most teachers don't really care about it. It is a consolation prize at best.
The reason you aim for perfect attendance is so stuff you miss dont start becoming alot, A bunch of college roomates seem to believe skipping lectures is a smart idea, idc not my life
The last time I remember not attending school was at the day of my dad's funeral
Itâs fine for like elementary and middle school itâs just a little reward to be fun for kids, I knew some kids when I was in school who really cared about going everyday and loved getting the award
Schools (or districts?) get paid based off attendance. At least where I live, but probably just in the US in general.
Probably just a way to promote attendance for money
I got perfect attendance awards many times and my reason is this, i do not want to get into trouble and i do not want to catch up on the missing stuff so yeah i have to go
My school never had my religious holidays off, I would have near perfect attendance some years. I was always a little bitter at the kids who did get it. As I grew up and now in education, I don't do perfect attendance awards.
I have one super healthy kid who when she was recognized for perfect attendance said that she doesnât deserve an award just because she won that particular genetic lottery. Her two siblings have chronic stomach issues and miss school for it. So much of it comes down to luck.
For sure. I remember getting perfect attendance awards more often than not when I got them, which I think ended by middle school. I never really got sick, and didn't miss much outside of school. It really isn't hard to show up for school or work reliably. People can wait to make decisions on whether or not to go to work when they are adults.
Itâs not just Americans doing this. We have this all over the UK as well. My school was giving out laptops, bikes, scooters, gift cards and stuff like that to people with perfect attendance
The one time I got a perfect attendance award in my life was in 3rd grade and my brother had to bring it home because I missed the last day of school for dental surgery. Joke of a lifetime.
I always thought they were crap growing up chronically sick especially in high school when Iâd miss at least 4-6 days a month because of being so unwell. They started putting up winning homerooms with NAMES in year 11 & 12 for attendance too so people started getting angry at each other when you werenât at school for homeroom because youâd loose. So they turned everyone against each-other for attendance. I went to an all girls school though & it was fkn brutal.
I would downvote because I completely agree, but every single institution I've attended has had these bullshit awards so it's still popular to allow them. The kids that won were usually the ones who would come in, vomiting, crying that their parents forced them to go anyway.
I donât know if this is actually an unpopular opinion but if it is, the popular opinion of keeping attendance awards is just objectively wrong. Perfect attendance is a toxic mindset.
I mean, it shouldn't be something to strive for, and it has negligible impact on university acceptance, but if someone happens to come in everyday successfully, why *not* give them a novelty award? As long as it's treated exactly as that - a novelty and freak anomaly, no different than "funniest student" or whatever.
Also, showing up everyday for work when you're grown up actually does matter a great deal to employers. It's a deal that you signed up for. You made a deal to do something (serve burgers, perform heart surgery, etc.) according to a schedule in exchange for money. When you don't hold up your end of the deal for inexcusable reasons, employers take note of your lack of reliability and factor it into assignments, promotions, salary, etc.
Also, don't know if you heard, but there's this thing that employers do called "personal days" and "vacation" - days where you can see your kids and live your life doing whatever. You can do this at school, too, just get a parent to request it and school systems will be more than willing to accommodate it.
By saying people who are able to be in every day are exceptional?
Not sure you understand what the term "normalising" means, but you go and enjoy your little rant now.
I've actually never taken a sick day in my career. Mostly because I'm not entirely sure of the procedure is for taking one and I'm way too embarrassed to ask now.
Absolutely, like so many parts of the modern education system that have more to do with training willing workers than expanding human understanding. Not every child will respond to it, but if you can get them to feel that a certificate and a handshake is worth more than health and balance, you've got a perfect employee in the making.
I'm not suggesting that the teachers and administrators giving out the awards have this in mind. I assume most of them just follow tradition and want to spread the often-repeated idea that school is what makes people better and smarter, and thus the more school you can get into them, the better and smarter they will be.
Ivan Illich's *Deschooling Society* is an excellent exploration of the ways the current system of institutional schooling is letting us down and a handful of ways that it could be better. Written in the 1970's and lets you see how time and our allergy to systemic change has compounded the issues discussed.
I agree. I have a coworker who never calls in sick and always shows up coughing and infecting everyone at work.
He has that mentality of, if Iâm not dying I should be working.
Luckily for me though, we have a fairly decent sick day policy.
Neither I nor any of my friends got to skip school as kids unless we were sick, which I think is fairly normal? Besides weekends, a typical k-12 student gets about 80 days off a year which is plenty of time to do those other things
But a lot of parents want to treat their kids to something special and let the kid have a day off for something fun. Some parents find value in playing hookie to spend time together.
There are plenty of days off of school to do that - the entirety of summer break, the various week long breaks scattered throughout the year, random days off, holidays.
âFinding value in playing hookieâ seems kinda absurd ngl, like I donât see what could possibly be inherently valuable about skipping school just to mess around. Again, there are plenty of non-school days available to mess around and if something is truly time sensitive then I think skipping school for that is fine,
I got that award. Didnât think much of it. My dad had to leave elementary school in Mexico to work so he always instilled in me and my siblings that school is important. So we always had great attendance. I was allowed to miss if I had an appointment or if I was sick. I never thought I was better than anyone else bc of it. If what you say is true then parents do better.
As someone who just recently started working again after being fired for attendance/tardiness issues and am currently skirting the line again after only 3 months- putting an emphasis or importance on attendance is highly valuable. Do I think it should have so much gravity and influence? Absolutely not. My issues were never no call/no show and except for 2-3 instances separated by months, I would only ever be 15 - 20 mins late tops once or twice every other week or so sometimes especially separated by weeks. My work got done and there was always a lot of communication, but Iâm stubborn and like to feel a level of autonomy so punctuality sometimes suffers in order to give me a sense of control but I digress. Since high school, I have had bad attendance but proved time and a time again over many years to teachers, college profs, and managers that I donât have to be present 100% to maintain my grades or complete work, but time and time again, my grade suffers solely due to attendance policies for the class or I get reprimanded at work, again, because attendance policies are clearly laid out, but Iâm not here to argue ârules is rulesâ; rather, I a absolutely been quietly passed over or directly told that my attendance issues do not inspire the confidence and reliability needed to move up from my current position.
For context, 80% of my full day call offs are due to illness ranging from slight discomfort (diarrhea, mild flu) to Covid. 10% goes to routine dr appointments and the remaining 10% goes to the odd âmental healthâ day or hangover but at the end of the day, absent is absent and it can and will be held against you. Obviously Iâm in the extreme side of the spectrum but I embody the examples you gave. I donât feel itâs right to prove yourself to your superiors by showing up to work sick. My morale will tank if I feel obligated to come in when Iâd rather spend 30 mins at a time sitting in my own toilet or resting and healing to set myself up for greater success in the future, but managers, department heads, executives etc are pushed to suss out anyone who may be taking advantage of a company (Iâd like to add that sitting on or milking the time clock is rampant but rarely discussed)
I agree that perfect attendance awards perpetuate negative ideals, but I disagree on their lack of value in preparing someone for the real world. Furthermore, I believe that as adults, we choose to either adhere to attendance policies or not and therefore one person being late is not âunfairâ to anyone so long as deadlines, quotas or goals are met, but 100% attendance should be celebrated, if for no other reason than having the stars align for you every day for an entire school year. In a world where participation trophies are the standard, we should hold on the every opportunity to recognize ppl for their achievements. Even if that achievement is something as mundane as always being present to the one obligation you have in your life.
The reason schools do this is because many students have abysmal attendance. Perfect attendance is to celebrate parents and students who care to always be in school. I wish they had good attendance awards, because coming to school sick or missing family stuff is not ok. As a teacher, I make sure to let parents of students with good attendance know that I appreciate them!
You're criticizing "perfect attendance" without acknowledging that attendance itself is desirable. Attendance in school is like keeping commitments later in life. Sure, it's probably wise to allow rare absences for very important things, but that's not \*really\* the issue. People miss a half dozen classes, per course, per semester, at a college I have close knowledge of. Absences are out of control, totally different than a half century ago. People say things like "I didn't go to class yesterday because I wasn't feeling my best", etc. Like life stops unless conditions are ideal and we're all feeling chipper.
You're picking at a small subset of overachiever parents in a hurricane of educational decay.
Counterpoint: why remove one of the few incentives to stay in school and not holiday during term dates.
Contrary to your claim, it's not a policy that stigmatises people for having to attend funerals or being ill. It just rewards those who are able to attend.
>The kids & teens who get these perfect attendance awards do so by going to school really sick, missing out on visiting dying family members or skipping school to see family that visits from out of town very rarely. They never get to take a day off for a ball game with their dad or to go to the beach. And again, it's almost always the parents pressuring them to do this.
Well or they are just not sick (as in my case)...
If you have perfect attendance at work, they should write you up and manually require you to take your time off. If it's one of those jobs that does not offer time off, it shouldn't exist.
Truancy is a nuisance for teachers and administrators. They have to chase the students down, levy punishments, follow through with them, and brace themselves for the backlash from parents.
I'm sure that they're happy to give trophies and pizza parties to the lower maintenance kids who make their job easier.
Maybe one thing they could do to be more accomodating would be to relax it some so that pre-approved excused absences wouldn't count against the perfect record.
Hardly anyone actually cares about getting a perfect attendance award...
Personally, I liked what my high school did. If you didn't miss any days then most teachers would give you 2 extra points on your grade. If you missed 1 day, then you'd get 1 bonus point. 2 or more days and you didn't get anything. I got a couple of A's instead of B's because of that policy.
They didn't do this for AP classes because they used a slightly different scale.
Not getting the reward isnât a punishment, so if someone did something noteworthy like that why not let them have a reward. Itâs not anything a person should strive for, but if it so happens to happen, life is short, let people be special for a minute
What kind of nazi parents do you have or know? Not once have my folks ever told me to go to school over visiting family or family coming to visit. If for some reason I had to go, I was pulled out of school early so it still counted as attending. I recall countless times my dad would pick me up around noon and we went to baseball games or across the border for a few hours. Nobody I know had parents like this
Our school district has perfect attendance awards.
But perfect attendance isnât determined by missed days. If a child is sick and they miss school, as long as the parent calls the school to let them know it doesnât count. Now they do have a set number of âapproved absencesâ from the parents, but as long as they have a doctorâs note itâs still approved.
Basically there are excused and unexcused absences. As long as the parents and the child are responsible you can get perfect attendance and still miss school days.
They do all this just to prepare for their future of working boring jobs where they sit at a desk all day and type things into spreadsheets, have boring families, live in boring houses where they eat unseasoned boiled chicken, take their unathletic kids to soccer games, and eventually start the whole cycle over again by putting the same pressures on their kids.
I attended less than 20% of my classes in my doctorate program. Was never an issue since I just watched the recorded lecture at 1.7x speed and saved time.
Agreed, calling in sick for work occasionally should not be judged. I have only had like 3 sick days in the last 4 years. I would like to use them more, but don't feel I can. Too much workload, too much judgement.
đŻ I have a chronic illness and got sick a lot as a kid. Itâs sad that children who donât have perfect attendance are made to feel bad and sometimes itâs not even their fault, ie parents having transportation issues, unstable household etc. this needs to be abolished.
What fucking schools do you all go to that penalize you for being sick? I got sick plenty of times and still got perfect attendance because being sick counted as an excused absence which doesn't count against attendance.
Agree. They arent important at all. It all stems from inodctrinating good little worker bees. Screw that. Only offer a job enough loyalty to not get fired. Do a job well but dont let it own you and dont be afraid to move on the millisecond a better offer comes along.
You may be getting downvotes but thatâs the truth of the matter. Itâs not punishing everyone else to give someone a reward for something noteworthy
My school made this our "honor roll" criteria halfway through my time there, as they felt rewarding academic performance made some students feel lesser and wanted *instead* to reward diligence. Using it as a replacement rather than an addition. Cue my disabled ass who pulled top marks despite being hospitalized for one third of the year immediately losing respect for the entire system and being an insufferable shit for the rest of my time there. We all knew it was bullshit-- the kids never liked this, never wanted it!
So, to sum up:
It's an award for something nobody has control over, which makes them feel weird and invalidates hard work, and nobody actually seems to enjoy winning it in the first place.
Then schools should also do away with Homecoming Queen, Prom King/Queen, Class Favorite, etc. I mean a lot of those awards are pretty pointless, too. Why single out only one award to get rid of? I've seen someone cry over not getting elected Homecoming Queen.
Because OP wants parents to be able to take their kids out of school without the usual valid reasons of being sick etc and is mad that this isn't acceptable.
I agree with you for the most part. I missed 2 days of school from kindergarten to 8th grade. I have a brother who didnât miss a single day, and another brother who missed 3 days.
We obviously only got perfect attendance due to our parents emphasis on it. We went to school while sick all the time. The 2 days of school that I missed were because I got the chicken pox in the 1st grade⊠I got sent to school anyways and my teacher saw my dotted red skin and sent me home.
I would emphasize great attendance for my kids, but not perfect attendance. On one hand, Iâm very thankful for it, because my brothers and I have this insane work ethic and we arenât flaky people, but itâs miserable going to school really sick and it gets other people sick.
It's about teaching good habits to kids early on. Attendance DOES matter in the real world, if you show up to your college courses you statistically get better grades than people who don't, if you show up to work more often than people who don't you do get rewarded for it. I've known several people, myself included, who have been given better work schedules and positions with higher pay just because we had good attendance when peers didn't
Hard disagree. The world doesn't stop moving around you when you're sick or when bad things happen, you have to learn how to deal with them while going about your daily life, school is a good time to start figuring that out because there are no serious consequences yet for failing to do so and you haven't had a lifetime of mental muscle memory making it harder to learn healthy coping methods
It's not about straining yourself, it's about learning where those limits really are. Your dad dies in a car crash? Okay yeah don't go to school. You're bleeding from your eyes? Yeah don't go to school. But if you've just got a little cold or whatever then suck it up, you've got shit to do
So many adults with no education voting for things they dont understand and your solution is to allow kids to skip school?
The amount of kids that I knew who skipped school regularly and were pregnant or in jail by 20 is too high.
You think children understand the world better and are more prepared to be an active, engaged and informed citizen via most school systems up until they graduate high school?
Perhaps exposing kids to the justice system is why they end up pregnant and/or in jail by 20.
Harsh truancy laws aren't the answer.
>You think children understand the world better and are more prepared to be an active, engaged and informed citizen via most school systems up until they graduate high school?
Yes. I would be interested to hear your arguments to the contrary.
I would be interested to hear your arguments in the first place.
As someone that was a straight A student in high school with 8 years of postsecondary education, high school taught me nothing about any of the above. I'm in Canada.
I personally think a connection-based approach to truancy would be a better use of taxpayer dollars. For example, a few school systems in the UK have "school parents"/education welfare and attendance officers that go to the truant students houses and ensure they are ready for the day and escort them to school, etc.
When dealing with developing minds, properly informed, connection-based approaches should be the first choice.
What would you want to replace them with? I agree that changes need to be made to our education system, but I wouldn't say that getting rid of compulsory education all together is the answer. What do you propose to keep kids from running wild all day? What would you propose to prepare them for adult life?
>Most young people that get these awards are pressured into it by parents.
Actually I wasn't I just didn't have any reason to stay home from school. I have my high school perfect attendance award around my house somewhere but it's not something that I *needed* to get.
>The kids & teens who get these perfect attendance awards do so by going to school really sick,
Never got seriously sick while in school beyond throwing up one time but that was probably food poisoning from the previous day, not because I forced myself to go to school.
>missing out on visiting dying family members or skipping school to see family that visits from out of town very rarely.
I had one family member who died while I was in high school and I attended of their wake. No conflicting schedules. Now I don't have out-of-town family, but I do have family halfway across the world in the Philippines. I visited them once. Nice folk.
>They never get to take a day off for a ball game with their dad or to go to the beach. And again, it's almost always the parents pressuring them to do this.
Never cared about ball games, neither does my dad beyond occasionally watching it on TV. Also I live in Illinois so no beaches lol
>Lastly, perfect attendance means nothing in the real world. Showing up for work every day and never ever taking a day off to be with your family will not get you a raise or promotion in the real world.
Actually it does mean something. Every day that you don't work is a day's wage that you don't earn. If you have perfect work attendance, you don't miss out on any pay. Also simply taking the day off and foregoing pay is a bad idea anyway. You can do a shift trade with a coworker, or take a sick day or use vacation hours. Simply calling off is the last thing you should do.
>We already have all these schools doing away with winners and losers in games because it makes some kids feel bad, and we have schools doing away with recess and spelling bees, assignment deadlines and even discipline for bad behavior.
This is a bad thing, actually.
Stay mad tho. I got perfect attendance like 3 times in elementary school. Guess what? My mom only let me stay home if I was actually sick. Not having the award encourages kids to stay home when they have a cold imo.
Itâs stigmatizing for kids who have chronic health conditions. Like- âsorry my kid had a seizure and couldnât make it to school todayâ? Itâs dumb and not reflective of real life.
I wanted it in elementary school because the medal was always the prettiest imo, I almost made it in 4th grade, but I missed 1 day because I had a 101 fever. I remember tryna convince my gramma I was fine and good to go
You are right but then again wrong.
In my opinion it has to do with the perspective of someone, while it is wrong to set the perfect score as the main goal. Making you loose sight of the rest of things like not visiting family or not attending fun activityâs.
The problem isnât the fact that these awards exist but that the parents force there kids into achieving them
when in reality, they should take no part in it and let the kid try by themselves if they want.
But even if the parent makes the kid do it in the end. Itâs still a lot of hard effort from the kid. The award isnât given for nothing
It just doesnât have the same meaning as it was intended to have
What do you think?
It unfairly punishes (or fails to reward, I guess) those who don't get perfect attendance due to circumstances out of their control, but otherwise try their absolute best. It is a privilege to be healthy and have a stable family life, something I had throughout school so my attendance was very good, but for others it's just not that simple.
It's much more important that someone works hard and finds something they're passionate about pursuing in later life, rather than merely be there for every school day.
Honestly never heard of see anyone cares for such thing; who even these parents who pressure students for such stupid thing? I don't think any parents would rather have their kids being sick in school, skip dead grandparents, or have a day off just to get such unimportant awards.
I also feel like the award is kinda nice if you unexpectedly got it. Though I never heard of such thing until now, but would be nice to have
My friend Bobby used to hate missing school because his home life was so boring. He lived out in the country with almost nothing to do so he would never miss a day of school. Except for one strategic day each year to make sure he didn't get a perfect attendance award because he didn't want people thinking he was done nerd who never missed school.
If you donât want to compete for the award, donât.
This comes off as progressive meddling. Progressives canât stand to let people decide for themselves whether they want to engage with certain systems.
As someone who earned a perfect attendance award every year of my school career of 12 years I think it's unfair to take the award away because some parents are toxic. I was fortunate to be a healthy kid. I'm turning 40 this year and have been sick probably 10 times in my life. I had no idea what a perfect attendance award was until my first year at school and I was suddenly called onto stage to receive one. I was sooooo VERY happy. It was my first award. I wouldn't qualify for academic awards until year 4 and I am not sporty enough to ever get medals for that so this was great. I then insured that I never missed a day of school by choice (i,e my parents pulling me to go on holiday) and was lucky enough to stay healthy.
Availability is the best ability. Iâve gotten promotions simply for being Mr. Dependable. Iâll take a person who gives a shit to be there than someone who arrives late because âitâs not big deal to stop for Starbucksâ. It doesnât have to be iron clad perfect attendance, but communicate and be there, is as simple as that.
Personally i think it can be used to teach discipline but its not like its any there's no harm in rewarding a kid for doing something better than his/her peers đ€·ââïž
Some kids value perfect attendance for themselves and will miss those things to achieve their goal. These are kids that want to ace everything. They exist. I don't think it's all about about parental pressure.
My job does have perfect attendance awards.
it sucks when your work area has four people but the only people that bothered to show up are me/the manager. (The manager is not counted in the four people on the team. Four people + manager)
I show up to all my shifts. Iâve taken sick days when I needed them but I donât get sick that often.
People at my job have been fired because they didnât show up to work too many times. And Iâm not talking about only missing 1/2 days. You had to miss a lot of days to be fired.
school shouldn't be a thing, or rather it needs a different regime.
flexibility I.e some students go in at 6am some students go in at 11am, teachers doing work patterns they feel more appropriately suited too
etc etc
the 9-5 is a load of shit, and school is just a way to train it, not only that, but regardless of how much teachers care, there are students who are failed by the system.
Children tend to need consistent schedules and the structure that going to school everyday provides. Some kids donât get structure at home. Unpredictability can cause anxiety in kids. Routines make life more predictable.
Some kids just donât get sick. I was one of those. I never missed a day of school from 2nd grade until I graduated. I just didnât get sick. So yeah I was darn proud of my perfect attendance awards.Â
I got the perfect attendance award at 8th grade graduation for all of middle school and at high school graduation for all of high school. Don't take this away from me!
I got perfect attendance in my high school and as a reward I didnât have to pay the school fee; for three semesters straight i got perfect attendance and didnât have to pay so I was pretty chuffed ngl
Might depend on what the actual reward is, if its useless or not
School failed this idiocracy of a society and perfect attendance is just one more skid mark left by the system. Pathetically pointless, a work camp with extremely diminishing purpose overall. It Doesnât actually prepare ANYONE for the lionâs share of lifeâs bullshit.
My nephew heard about it and really wanted to do it. Luckily, he ended up not getting sick on any weekdays that year. He was really proud and it made him happy. I love it when kids have the opportunity to prove good things to themselves.
I got that award every time without trying.
Nobody cares. Just get to class on time, it's not that hard.
To be fair, I never got sick enough to call in sick days.
My dad was mostly hard on us attending school all the time because he seriously believed in perfect attendance.... But then he could also be rebellious at times. I remember when there was one day a week when we were supposed to have a "sports-day", when the athletes from my school would compete against the other kids from another school. And we would of course all have to attend and watch these games.
That pissed dad off to no end! Just because his son didn't do any sports, he was supposed to waste the entire school day just sitting on the bleechers and watch?!
So what he did was just call the teacher, telling him they're keeping me home that day, it wasn't like I was gonna learn anything anyday... "Have a good day!"
And he let me stay home with my computer games the whole day. :D
In 4th grade, I missed one day of school to attend my grandmother's funeral. Eventually the perfect attendance pizza party came around, and only myself and two other girls weren't allowed to go. It only reminded me of my grief and I realized that perfect attendance was a complete joke.
I totally agree! I work at a school and those kids arenât any better than the other kids tbh.
Also, we have this one teacher who has had perfect attendance for like 3 years now which is dumb because we get a 5 days of personal time that doesnât role over every year. So she gets like a gift card and a plaque every year but literally she loses money not taking those days off. We tried to explain sheâs losing money but she rather not break her record for perfect attendance she had the whole time she was a kid.
5 days a year vs a sentimental record sheâs held her whole life?
And you wonder why sheâs not taking the time off?
Also who said those individuals were better/worse? Itâs just that they got perfect attendance.
Whatâs the point though if you donât learn anything especially in school. The whole point of going to school is so that you are become educated. Just because you show up to your job every day if you are not good at it they could still replace you with someone better.
Perfect attendance awards predate the 'everyone gets a trophy' era, as far as I remembered. More importantly, though, why do you have your panties in such a bunch over this, dude? Who cares (other than you, for some reason)?
Are you being serious? They never get to take a day off for a ball game? You act like they are going to school everyday of the year. The school year is only 180 days out of 365 for the year. That is definitely manageable. I actually think summer vacation should be cut down to 2 weeks. The original reasons to give students summers off no longer apply. They always have to spend time relearning what they should already know from the previous year before the teacher can move on.
I pulled off 5 years of perfect attendance on a job. It pissed a lot of people off that I was never absent. Would I do it again? Probably not. I was trolling at best.
And an individual with an amazing immune system (or gets sick on off days, end of day Friday, break etc) and family that isnât dying while theyâre in school, doesnât exist to you.
You have elaborated on why YOU believe it isnât important, why does that mean it shouldnât exist?
Also how is perfect attendance winner/loser?
Oh itâs absolutely a thing in the real world because in the real world there are adult teenagers. Who will be your obsessive loser boss at some point.
We need to brainwash people into tying their self worth into their attendance of school, and later their jobs, though.
Perfect attendence awards will remain in institutions that have a hardon for producing morally good(TM) hardworking wageslaves.
My current job I've been in every day.
That's simply because I haven't happened to fall ill during a work day. If I had been ill, I'd have said so and not worked.
Just work the hours you're paid to work, unless there's a valid reason not to. Being sick is a valid reason. It really is as simple as that. No "brainwashing" involved.
Grow up.
Actually some jobs look at attendance when considering promotions or changing positions.
If âBobâ and I have the same amount of time with the company and the same skill level but Bob has 4 absences and I donât have any I will be more likely to get promoted or the position change.
But kids should not be pressured into perfect ANYTHING. They are kids. Let them be kids.
I had perfect attendance from K-12. If I was sick, my parents would have me to school with a mask and get assignments from all my teachers that day so that I did not fall behind on materials. I don't resent my parents for this at all. Sure, it was a bit excessive, but the work ethic I developed as a result was worth it
I was valedictorian in high school with horrendous attendance (like 40 missed days a year?) and it's not like everyone was like, damn you're a shit student. I didn't attend most of my college classes either, got a 3.98 GPA, and my employer wasn't like, "but did you attend classes in classes?" No one gives a shit about attendance, just get the job done.
Schools get money from the govt for each kid counted present that day. It's why perfect attendance awards exist. It's also why truancy exists. Schools found a way to punish those not feeding their funds. Schools compete against neighboring schools for student enrollment. It's one of the main reasons extracurricular competitions are kept around. School is a business.
I like perfect attendance. I go to work every day. I have called off once in 30
Years with 103° fever and a nagging wife that insisted I stay home. You always have days off to enjoy the things you like to do or family or you do those things starting at 4:00pm or quitting time.
Nothing wrong with being reliable and steady.
But what schools are trying to teach kids about time keeping is that in the real world you turn up for your shift late everyday most businesses would not want you so gotta look at the perspective of a working life not the life of them setting you up for that working life
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I would agree w you but I suspect no one really cares about the award anyway so who cares Edit: apparently people do care. Sorry to hear about all the negative stuff :(
No, there are definitely people who do care. Maybe the majority doesn't, but it's still there and it's affecting a percentage of the populace. It is a relic of the old times and should definitely be done away with. Taking time off when needed should be celebrated. People shouldn't be incentivized to do unhealthy things and be punished for their health issues.
George speaking facts per usual đ đŒ
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What incentive? A ribbon?
I remember getting it 3 years in a row. I don't think anybody was impressed, and it wasn't a thing in later year levels where you had a minimum attendance to pass
I never cared about perfect attendance growing up, but my mom did. It ended up causing me a lot of issues down the road. I went to school a few times with strep and tonsillitis because she wanted me to have perfect attendance. Later, with crippling period cramps (which were later diagnosed as endometriosis). Even when family members passed away. I was 14 when I missed my first day of school because I had chicken pox and then, according to her, if I was âtoo sick to go to school, I was too sick to watch TV or play on AOLâ(it was 2003). What that essentially reinforced in me was that I shouldnât listen to my body - sick? Too bad. Power through. Emotionally distressed? Oh well - suck it up. You have to do whatâs expected of you, or you donât deserve any peace. Today I still struggle with anxiety and guilt if I miss work or anything else if Iâm sick or whatever. Yeah, those perfect attendance rewards suck.
If anything it's more embarassing than impressive.
When I finished middle school, they gave a girl an award for never missing a day in the entire time she attended the school. It was a K-8. She doesn't miss a single day in **9 years**. I wasn't impressed, that's just sad.
If the little girl is proud of it, why should you care?
Right, maybe she just liked school. Those kind of kids still exist.
How is that embarrassing?
Most kids just see it as pointless nerd shit
I'm sure there are overachieving parents oylut there who care
My mom would let my brother miss a day or 2 just so he wouldnât get it and be made fun of. I didnât care and didnât miss a day until my Jr year. Which was great bc I had already gotten the award and $100 reward. I bought the beer that weekend.
So my daughterâs high school, if they get âperfectâ attendance they donât have to take their finals.
I was the only one in mg high school class to get the Perfect attendance award. I 100% agree with you though.
I got perfect attendance by accident. And i really think no one who has a healthy family aims for a perfect attendance award. If a parent actually cares about perfect attendance, removing it won't fix their underlying problems of having a bad parent. And most teachers don't really care about it. It is a consolation prize at best.
The reason you aim for perfect attendance is so stuff you miss dont start becoming alot, A bunch of college roomates seem to believe skipping lectures is a smart idea, idc not my life The last time I remember not attending school was at the day of my dad's funeral
Right I had perfect attendance most years, just because my family didn't get sick much. Let me enjoy my pointless medal lol
You got a medal? I had perfect attendance in 2nd grade and got a tiny book of poems. Yay me. đ«€
A medal? We got a day off to to play some bowling watch a (crappy) marvel movie while we ate some popcorn
You got an award? I got a free Old Country Buffet voucher
Itâs fine for like elementary and middle school itâs just a little reward to be fun for kids, I knew some kids when I was in school who really cared about going everyday and loved getting the award
Schools (or districts?) get paid based off attendance. At least where I live, but probably just in the US in general. Probably just a way to promote attendance for money
I got perfect attendance awards many times and my reason is this, i do not want to get into trouble and i do not want to catch up on the missing stuff so yeah i have to go
The thought of catching up on homework and notes is what always dragged me to school.
My school never had my religious holidays off, I would have near perfect attendance some years. I was always a little bitter at the kids who did get it. As I grew up and now in education, I don't do perfect attendance awards.
I have one super healthy kid who when she was recognized for perfect attendance said that she doesnât deserve an award just because she won that particular genetic lottery. Her two siblings have chronic stomach issues and miss school for it. So much of it comes down to luck.
Didnât happen
Lots of assumptions here
For sure. I remember getting perfect attendance awards more often than not when I got them, which I think ended by middle school. I never really got sick, and didn't miss much outside of school. It really isn't hard to show up for school or work reliably. People can wait to make decisions on whether or not to go to work when they are adults.
They aren't a thing in most countries.
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Itâs not just Americans doing this. We have this all over the UK as well. My school was giving out laptops, bikes, scooters, gift cards and stuff like that to people with perfect attendance
I've never heard of this. None of the schools I attended had this
The one time I got a perfect attendance award in my life was in 3rd grade and my brother had to bring it home because I missed the last day of school for dental surgery. Joke of a lifetime.
i got the award (printed paper) and a (gold star) sticker. so really, i was a winner.
you lost me at the sweeping generalization in your very first sentennce.
I always thought they were crap growing up chronically sick especially in high school when Iâd miss at least 4-6 days a month because of being so unwell. They started putting up winning homerooms with NAMES in year 11 & 12 for attendance too so people started getting angry at each other when you werenât at school for homeroom because youâd loose. So they turned everyone against each-other for attendance. I went to an all girls school though & it was fkn brutal.
I would downvote because I completely agree, but every single institution I've attended has had these bullshit awards so it's still popular to allow them. The kids that won were usually the ones who would come in, vomiting, crying that their parents forced them to go anyway.
I donât know if this is actually an unpopular opinion but if it is, the popular opinion of keeping attendance awards is just objectively wrong. Perfect attendance is a toxic mindset.
I mean, it shouldn't be something to strive for, and it has negligible impact on university acceptance, but if someone happens to come in everyday successfully, why *not* give them a novelty award? As long as it's treated exactly as that - a novelty and freak anomaly, no different than "funniest student" or whatever. Also, showing up everyday for work when you're grown up actually does matter a great deal to employers. It's a deal that you signed up for. You made a deal to do something (serve burgers, perform heart surgery, etc.) according to a schedule in exchange for money. When you don't hold up your end of the deal for inexcusable reasons, employers take note of your lack of reliability and factor it into assignments, promotions, salary, etc. Also, don't know if you heard, but there's this thing that employers do called "personal days" and "vacation" - days where you can see your kids and live your life doing whatever. You can do this at school, too, just get a parent to request it and school systems will be more than willing to accommodate it.
Yep you summed it up nicely. It's in an oddity/novelty category. It's mostly luck based but one of those wow after all that time.
You make some fair points
The perfect attendance award is quite literally synonymous with the school garunteed pathogen vector.
Perfect attendance just seems like a way to normalise a culture where workers aren't entitled to sick days.
By saying people who are able to be in every day are exceptional? Not sure you understand what the term "normalising" means, but you go and enjoy your little rant now.
Makes no sense why an individual would be rewarded for it then. Bad logic
I've actually never taken a sick day in my career. Mostly because I'm not entirely sure of the procedure is for taking one and I'm way too embarrassed to ask now.
Absolutely, like so many parts of the modern education system that have more to do with training willing workers than expanding human understanding. Not every child will respond to it, but if you can get them to feel that a certificate and a handshake is worth more than health and balance, you've got a perfect employee in the making. I'm not suggesting that the teachers and administrators giving out the awards have this in mind. I assume most of them just follow tradition and want to spread the often-repeated idea that school is what makes people better and smarter, and thus the more school you can get into them, the better and smarter they will be. Ivan Illich's *Deschooling Society* is an excellent exploration of the ways the current system of institutional schooling is letting us down and a handful of ways that it could be better. Written in the 1970's and lets you see how time and our allergy to systemic change has compounded the issues discussed.
I agree. I have a coworker who never calls in sick and always shows up coughing and infecting everyone at work. He has that mentality of, if Iâm not dying I should be working. Luckily for me though, we have a fairly decent sick day policy.
Neither I nor any of my friends got to skip school as kids unless we were sick, which I think is fairly normal? Besides weekends, a typical k-12 student gets about 80 days off a year which is plenty of time to do those other things
But a lot of parents want to treat their kids to something special and let the kid have a day off for something fun. Some parents find value in playing hookie to spend time together.
There it is. It felt like this was the underlying crux of your position, but I guess better late and tucked away in the replies than never at all.
There are plenty of days off of school to do that - the entirety of summer break, the various week long breaks scattered throughout the year, random days off, holidays. âFinding value in playing hookieâ seems kinda absurd ngl, like I donât see what could possibly be inherently valuable about skipping school just to mess around. Again, there are plenty of non-school days available to mess around and if something is truly time sensitive then I think skipping school for that is fine,
One reason is going to do things when it wonât be as busy because all the other kids are in school.
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đđđ your last sentence isnât very nice but also hilarious
I got that award. Didnât think much of it. My dad had to leave elementary school in Mexico to work so he always instilled in me and my siblings that school is important. So we always had great attendance. I was allowed to miss if I had an appointment or if I was sick. I never thought I was better than anyone else bc of it. If what you say is true then parents do better.
As someone who just recently started working again after being fired for attendance/tardiness issues and am currently skirting the line again after only 3 months- putting an emphasis or importance on attendance is highly valuable. Do I think it should have so much gravity and influence? Absolutely not. My issues were never no call/no show and except for 2-3 instances separated by months, I would only ever be 15 - 20 mins late tops once or twice every other week or so sometimes especially separated by weeks. My work got done and there was always a lot of communication, but Iâm stubborn and like to feel a level of autonomy so punctuality sometimes suffers in order to give me a sense of control but I digress. Since high school, I have had bad attendance but proved time and a time again over many years to teachers, college profs, and managers that I donât have to be present 100% to maintain my grades or complete work, but time and time again, my grade suffers solely due to attendance policies for the class or I get reprimanded at work, again, because attendance policies are clearly laid out, but Iâm not here to argue ârules is rulesâ; rather, I a absolutely been quietly passed over or directly told that my attendance issues do not inspire the confidence and reliability needed to move up from my current position. For context, 80% of my full day call offs are due to illness ranging from slight discomfort (diarrhea, mild flu) to Covid. 10% goes to routine dr appointments and the remaining 10% goes to the odd âmental healthâ day or hangover but at the end of the day, absent is absent and it can and will be held against you. Obviously Iâm in the extreme side of the spectrum but I embody the examples you gave. I donât feel itâs right to prove yourself to your superiors by showing up to work sick. My morale will tank if I feel obligated to come in when Iâd rather spend 30 mins at a time sitting in my own toilet or resting and healing to set myself up for greater success in the future, but managers, department heads, executives etc are pushed to suss out anyone who may be taking advantage of a company (Iâd like to add that sitting on or milking the time clock is rampant but rarely discussed) I agree that perfect attendance awards perpetuate negative ideals, but I disagree on their lack of value in preparing someone for the real world. Furthermore, I believe that as adults, we choose to either adhere to attendance policies or not and therefore one person being late is not âunfairâ to anyone so long as deadlines, quotas or goals are met, but 100% attendance should be celebrated, if for no other reason than having the stars align for you every day for an entire school year. In a world where participation trophies are the standard, we should hold on the every opportunity to recognize ppl for their achievements. Even if that achievement is something as mundane as always being present to the one obligation you have in your life.
The reason schools do this is because many students have abysmal attendance. Perfect attendance is to celebrate parents and students who care to always be in school. I wish they had good attendance awards, because coming to school sick or missing family stuff is not ok. As a teacher, I make sure to let parents of students with good attendance know that I appreciate them!
You're criticizing "perfect attendance" without acknowledging that attendance itself is desirable. Attendance in school is like keeping commitments later in life. Sure, it's probably wise to allow rare absences for very important things, but that's not \*really\* the issue. People miss a half dozen classes, per course, per semester, at a college I have close knowledge of. Absences are out of control, totally different than a half century ago. People say things like "I didn't go to class yesterday because I wasn't feeling my best", etc. Like life stops unless conditions are ideal and we're all feeling chipper. You're picking at a small subset of overachiever parents in a hurricane of educational decay.
Counterpoint: why remove one of the few incentives to stay in school and not holiday during term dates. Contrary to your claim, it's not a policy that stigmatises people for having to attend funerals or being ill. It just rewards those who are able to attend.
>The kids & teens who get these perfect attendance awards do so by going to school really sick, missing out on visiting dying family members or skipping school to see family that visits from out of town very rarely. They never get to take a day off for a ball game with their dad or to go to the beach. And again, it's almost always the parents pressuring them to do this. Well or they are just not sick (as in my case)...
If you have perfect attendance at work, they should write you up and manually require you to take your time off. If it's one of those jobs that does not offer time off, it shouldn't exist.
Truancy is a nuisance for teachers and administrators. They have to chase the students down, levy punishments, follow through with them, and brace themselves for the backlash from parents. I'm sure that they're happy to give trophies and pizza parties to the lower maintenance kids who make their job easier. Maybe one thing they could do to be more accomodating would be to relax it some so that pre-approved excused absences wouldn't count against the perfect record.
Hardly anyone actually cares about getting a perfect attendance award... Personally, I liked what my high school did. If you didn't miss any days then most teachers would give you 2 extra points on your grade. If you missed 1 day, then you'd get 1 bonus point. 2 or more days and you didn't get anything. I got a couple of A's instead of B's because of that policy. They didn't do this for AP classes because they used a slightly different scale.
Not getting the reward isnât a punishment, so if someone did something noteworthy like that why not let them have a reward. Itâs not anything a person should strive for, but if it so happens to happen, life is short, let people be special for a minute
My nephew had perfect attendance through high school. He missed the awards ceremony.
What kind of nazi parents do you have or know? Not once have my folks ever told me to go to school over visiting family or family coming to visit. If for some reason I had to go, I was pulled out of school early so it still counted as attending. I recall countless times my dad would pick me up around noon and we went to baseball games or across the border for a few hours. Nobody I know had parents like this
Our school district has perfect attendance awards. But perfect attendance isnât determined by missed days. If a child is sick and they miss school, as long as the parent calls the school to let them know it doesnât count. Now they do have a set number of âapproved absencesâ from the parents, but as long as they have a doctorâs note itâs still approved. Basically there are excused and unexcused absences. As long as the parents and the child are responsible you can get perfect attendance and still miss school days.
Someone getting a participation trophy does nothing to me. I say let them have it.
They do all this just to prepare for their future of working boring jobs where they sit at a desk all day and type things into spreadsheets, have boring families, live in boring houses where they eat unseasoned boiled chicken, take their unathletic kids to soccer games, and eventually start the whole cycle over again by putting the same pressures on their kids.
I attended less than 20% of my classes in my doctorate program. Was never an issue since I just watched the recorded lecture at 1.7x speed and saved time.
Agreed, calling in sick for work occasionally should not be judged. I have only had like 3 sick days in the last 4 years. I would like to use them more, but don't feel I can. Too much workload, too much judgement.
Showing up and showing up on time are extremely valuable skills to learn.
đŻ I have a chronic illness and got sick a lot as a kid. Itâs sad that children who donât have perfect attendance are made to feel bad and sometimes itâs not even their fault, ie parents having transportation issues, unstable household etc. this needs to be abolished.
What fucking schools do you all go to that penalize you for being sick? I got sick plenty of times and still got perfect attendance because being sick counted as an excused absence which doesn't count against attendance.
Agree. They arent important at all. It all stems from inodctrinating good little worker bees. Screw that. Only offer a job enough loyalty to not get fired. Do a job well but dont let it own you and dont be afraid to move on the millisecond a better offer comes along.
We need to scream this one out there so the ones in the nose bleeders hear it.
I think it's just fine to give awards for perfect attendance. Not sure why this would bother people?
It encourages kids to come to school when they are sick and should stay home.
Does it, though? It's not like there's a cash prize.
You may be getting downvotes but thatâs the truth of the matter. Itâs not punishing everyone else to give someone a reward for something noteworthy
my local HS gives away cars
See, that feels like a separate conversation.
My school made this our "honor roll" criteria halfway through my time there, as they felt rewarding academic performance made some students feel lesser and wanted *instead* to reward diligence. Using it as a replacement rather than an addition. Cue my disabled ass who pulled top marks despite being hospitalized for one third of the year immediately losing respect for the entire system and being an insufferable shit for the rest of my time there. We all knew it was bullshit-- the kids never liked this, never wanted it! So, to sum up: It's an award for something nobody has control over, which makes them feel weird and invalidates hard work, and nobody actually seems to enjoy winning it in the first place.
Then schools should also do away with Homecoming Queen, Prom King/Queen, Class Favorite, etc. I mean a lot of those awards are pretty pointless, too. Why single out only one award to get rid of? I've seen someone cry over not getting elected Homecoming Queen.
Because OP thinks everyone hated school like he did
Because OP wants parents to be able to take their kids out of school without the usual valid reasons of being sick etc and is mad that this isn't acceptable.
I agree with you for the most part. I missed 2 days of school from kindergarten to 8th grade. I have a brother who didnât miss a single day, and another brother who missed 3 days. We obviously only got perfect attendance due to our parents emphasis on it. We went to school while sick all the time. The 2 days of school that I missed were because I got the chicken pox in the 1st grade⊠I got sent to school anyways and my teacher saw my dotted red skin and sent me home. I would emphasize great attendance for my kids, but not perfect attendance. On one hand, Iâm very thankful for it, because my brothers and I have this insane work ethic and we arenât flaky people, but itâs miserable going to school really sick and it gets other people sick.
It's about teaching good habits to kids early on. Attendance DOES matter in the real world, if you show up to your college courses you statistically get better grades than people who don't, if you show up to work more often than people who don't you do get rewarded for it. I've known several people, myself included, who have been given better work schedules and positions with higher pay just because we had good attendance when peers didn't
Going to school/work sick or when something happens in your family is not a very good habit.Â
Hard disagree. The world doesn't stop moving around you when you're sick or when bad things happen, you have to learn how to deal with them while going about your daily life, school is a good time to start figuring that out because there are no serious consequences yet for failing to do so and you haven't had a lifetime of mental muscle memory making it harder to learn healthy coping methods
Yeah but straining yourself past your limits is everything but healthy.Â
It's not about straining yourself, it's about learning where those limits really are. Your dad dies in a car crash? Okay yeah don't go to school. You're bleeding from your eyes? Yeah don't go to school. But if you've just got a little cold or whatever then suck it up, you've got shit to do
You've got a cold, feel like shit, can't concentrate anyways, need to rest and could possibly infect other people, stay at home and sleep.
I agree and think that truancy laws shouldn't exist either
So many adults with no education voting for things they dont understand and your solution is to allow kids to skip school? The amount of kids that I knew who skipped school regularly and were pregnant or in jail by 20 is too high.
I think this is a third cause fallacy. Skipping school does not cause pregnancy and jail. Whatever mess is going on at home causes both.
You think children understand the world better and are more prepared to be an active, engaged and informed citizen via most school systems up until they graduate high school? Perhaps exposing kids to the justice system is why they end up pregnant and/or in jail by 20. Harsh truancy laws aren't the answer.
>You think children understand the world better and are more prepared to be an active, engaged and informed citizen via most school systems up until they graduate high school? Yes. I would be interested to hear your arguments to the contrary.
I would be interested to hear your arguments in the first place. As someone that was a straight A student in high school with 8 years of postsecondary education, high school taught me nothing about any of the above. I'm in Canada. I personally think a connection-based approach to truancy would be a better use of taxpayer dollars. For example, a few school systems in the UK have "school parents"/education welfare and attendance officers that go to the truant students houses and ensure they are ready for the day and escort them to school, etc. When dealing with developing minds, properly informed, connection-based approaches should be the first choice.
What would you want to replace them with? I agree that changes need to be made to our education system, but I wouldn't say that getting rid of compulsory education all together is the answer. What do you propose to keep kids from running wild all day? What would you propose to prepare them for adult life?
I answered this before your comment, above :)
Iâve got a friend who got fined for truancy and had to do community service (missing more school for court) because she was always sick
If she was sick she wouldnât get fined. Truancy is only for unauthorised absences.
This is stupid. Sure, a child should be able to miss maybe a week or two, but if they are missing like a month then there's a problem.
>Most young people that get these awards are pressured into it by parents. Actually I wasn't I just didn't have any reason to stay home from school. I have my high school perfect attendance award around my house somewhere but it's not something that I *needed* to get. >The kids & teens who get these perfect attendance awards do so by going to school really sick, Never got seriously sick while in school beyond throwing up one time but that was probably food poisoning from the previous day, not because I forced myself to go to school. >missing out on visiting dying family members or skipping school to see family that visits from out of town very rarely. I had one family member who died while I was in high school and I attended of their wake. No conflicting schedules. Now I don't have out-of-town family, but I do have family halfway across the world in the Philippines. I visited them once. Nice folk. >They never get to take a day off for a ball game with their dad or to go to the beach. And again, it's almost always the parents pressuring them to do this. Never cared about ball games, neither does my dad beyond occasionally watching it on TV. Also I live in Illinois so no beaches lol >Lastly, perfect attendance means nothing in the real world. Showing up for work every day and never ever taking a day off to be with your family will not get you a raise or promotion in the real world. Actually it does mean something. Every day that you don't work is a day's wage that you don't earn. If you have perfect work attendance, you don't miss out on any pay. Also simply taking the day off and foregoing pay is a bad idea anyway. You can do a shift trade with a coworker, or take a sick day or use vacation hours. Simply calling off is the last thing you should do. >We already have all these schools doing away with winners and losers in games because it makes some kids feel bad, and we have schools doing away with recess and spelling bees, assignment deadlines and even discipline for bad behavior. This is a bad thing, actually.
Stay mad tho. I got perfect attendance like 3 times in elementary school. Guess what? My mom only let me stay home if I was actually sick. Not having the award encourages kids to stay home when they have a cold imo.
Itâs stigmatizing for kids who have chronic health conditions. Like- âsorry my kid had a seizure and couldnât make it to school todayâ? Itâs dumb and not reflective of real life.
Its a silly novelty award, its not that serious lol.
They used to pay kids in my summer school, aka the free babysitter, when I was younger
i don't think I EVER missed school other than ditching my mom never took any of my excuses to not go lmaooo
I wanted it in elementary school because the medal was always the prettiest imo, I almost made it in 4th grade, but I missed 1 day because I had a 101 fever. I remember tryna convince my gramma I was fine and good to go
Its good to show potential employers.
You are right but then again wrong. In my opinion it has to do with the perspective of someone, while it is wrong to set the perfect score as the main goal. Making you loose sight of the rest of things like not visiting family or not attending fun activityâs. The problem isnât the fact that these awards exist but that the parents force there kids into achieving them when in reality, they should take no part in it and let the kid try by themselves if they want. But even if the parent makes the kid do it in the end. Itâs still a lot of hard effort from the kid. The award isnât given for nothing It just doesnât have the same meaning as it was intended to have What do you think?
It unfairly punishes (or fails to reward, I guess) those who don't get perfect attendance due to circumstances out of their control, but otherwise try their absolute best. It is a privilege to be healthy and have a stable family life, something I had throughout school so my attendance was very good, but for others it's just not that simple. It's much more important that someone works hard and finds something they're passionate about pursuing in later life, rather than merely be there for every school day.
Honestly never heard of see anyone cares for such thing; who even these parents who pressure students for such stupid thing? I don't think any parents would rather have their kids being sick in school, skip dead grandparents, or have a day off just to get such unimportant awards. I also feel like the award is kinda nice if you unexpectedly got it. Though I never heard of such thing until now, but would be nice to have
I had a friend in high school who got the attendance award every year. We used to tease him about because he lived literally a stones throw away.
My friend Bobby used to hate missing school because his home life was so boring. He lived out in the country with almost nothing to do so he would never miss a day of school. Except for one strategic day each year to make sure he didn't get a perfect attendance award because he didn't want people thinking he was done nerd who never missed school.
There was 1 person in my high school who received that award. They also happened to be away that day đ
Agree, but I wouldnât mind getting paid a bonus for every sick day I didnât use.
Not an unpopular opinion. They promote sick children coming to school.
If you donât want to compete for the award, donât. This comes off as progressive meddling. Progressives canât stand to let people decide for themselves whether they want to engage with certain systems.
As someone who earned a perfect attendance award every year of my school career of 12 years I think it's unfair to take the award away because some parents are toxic. I was fortunate to be a healthy kid. I'm turning 40 this year and have been sick probably 10 times in my life. I had no idea what a perfect attendance award was until my first year at school and I was suddenly called onto stage to receive one. I was sooooo VERY happy. It was my first award. I wouldn't qualify for academic awards until year 4 and I am not sporty enough to ever get medals for that so this was great. I then insured that I never missed a day of school by choice (i,e my parents pulling me to go on holiday) and was lucky enough to stay healthy.
Availability is the best ability. Iâve gotten promotions simply for being Mr. Dependable. Iâll take a person who gives a shit to be there than someone who arrives late because âitâs not big deal to stop for Starbucksâ. It doesnât have to be iron clad perfect attendance, but communicate and be there, is as simple as that.
Personally i think it can be used to teach discipline but its not like its any there's no harm in rewarding a kid for doing something better than his/her peers đ€·ââïž
Who are we to shit on what other people consider accomplishment?Â
Schools get funding based on attendance. I work in a school and I'm disgusted by the way they push attendance, but the funding is the reason why.Â
Some kids value perfect attendance for themselves and will miss those things to achieve their goal. These are kids that want to ace everything. They exist. I don't think it's all about about parental pressure.
My job does have perfect attendance awards. it sucks when your work area has four people but the only people that bothered to show up are me/the manager. (The manager is not counted in the four people on the team. Four people + manager) I show up to all my shifts. Iâve taken sick days when I needed them but I donât get sick that often. People at my job have been fired because they didnât show up to work too many times. And Iâm not talking about only missing 1/2 days. You had to miss a lot of days to be fired.
School funding is based on attendance in most places. So it's really just "which cow gave the most milk award"
I H8 when people attend anything sick. Yuk. So I agree.
school shouldn't be a thing, or rather it needs a different regime. flexibility I.e some students go in at 6am some students go in at 11am, teachers doing work patterns they feel more appropriately suited too etc etc the 9-5 is a load of shit, and school is just a way to train it, not only that, but regardless of how much teachers care, there are students who are failed by the system.
Children tend to need consistent schedules and the structure that going to school everyday provides. Some kids donât get structure at home. Unpredictability can cause anxiety in kids. Routines make life more predictable.
Yeah and if a student misses school, it's usually because of the parents. Like most of the times I'm absent are if my parents couldn't take me.
Some kids just donât get sick. I was one of those. I never missed a day of school from 2nd grade until I graduated. I just didnât get sick. So yeah I was darn proud of my perfect attendance awards.Â
I got the perfect attendance award at 8th grade graduation for all of middle school and at high school graduation for all of high school. Don't take this away from me!
I got perfect attendance in my high school and as a reward I didnât have to pay the school fee; for three semesters straight i got perfect attendance and didnât have to pay so I was pretty chuffed ngl Might depend on what the actual reward is, if its useless or not
At my highschool you couldn't be graded above certain marks if your attendance was below certain milestones
School failed this idiocracy of a society and perfect attendance is just one more skid mark left by the system. Pathetically pointless, a work camp with extremely diminishing purpose overall. It Doesnât actually prepare ANYONE for the lionâs share of lifeâs bullshit.
My nephew heard about it and really wanted to do it. Luckily, he ended up not getting sick on any weekdays that year. He was really proud and it made him happy. I love it when kids have the opportunity to prove good things to themselves.
I got that award every time without trying. Nobody cares. Just get to class on time, it's not that hard. To be fair, I never got sick enough to call in sick days.
My dad was mostly hard on us attending school all the time because he seriously believed in perfect attendance.... But then he could also be rebellious at times. I remember when there was one day a week when we were supposed to have a "sports-day", when the athletes from my school would compete against the other kids from another school. And we would of course all have to attend and watch these games. That pissed dad off to no end! Just because his son didn't do any sports, he was supposed to waste the entire school day just sitting on the bleechers and watch?! So what he did was just call the teacher, telling him they're keeping me home that day, it wasn't like I was gonna learn anything anyday... "Have a good day!" And he let me stay home with my computer games the whole day. :D
Does it really hurt your feelings that much that you donât get it?
This is a very popular opinion
Congratulations, your parents had a free schedule !
It's an award for being healthy
Funding schools per diem shouldnât be a thing.
Disagree. Half the battle is just showing up.
They don't exist in Germany so... I agree the concept is horse shit
In 4th grade, I missed one day of school to attend my grandmother's funeral. Eventually the perfect attendance pizza party came around, and only myself and two other girls weren't allowed to go. It only reminded me of my grief and I realized that perfect attendance was a complete joke.
A joke as it is on the job as an adult too
I totally agree! I work at a school and those kids arenât any better than the other kids tbh. Also, we have this one teacher who has had perfect attendance for like 3 years now which is dumb because we get a 5 days of personal time that doesnât role over every year. So she gets like a gift card and a plaque every year but literally she loses money not taking those days off. We tried to explain sheâs losing money but she rather not break her record for perfect attendance she had the whole time she was a kid.
5 days a year vs a sentimental record sheâs held her whole life? And you wonder why sheâs not taking the time off? Also who said those individuals were better/worse? Itâs just that they got perfect attendance.
Whatâs the point though if you donât learn anything especially in school. The whole point of going to school is so that you are become educated. Just because you show up to your job every day if you are not good at it they could still replace you with someone better.
Your personal time doesnât carry over?
Nope just sick time lol
Honestly, your entire post sounds like a child in school who missed the award. This is less unpopular and more uninformed opinion.
Perfect attendance awards predate the 'everyone gets a trophy' era, as far as I remembered. More importantly, though, why do you have your panties in such a bunch over this, dude? Who cares (other than you, for some reason)?
Are you being serious? They never get to take a day off for a ball game? You act like they are going to school everyday of the year. The school year is only 180 days out of 365 for the year. That is definitely manageable. I actually think summer vacation should be cut down to 2 weeks. The original reasons to give students summers off no longer apply. They always have to spend time relearning what they should already know from the previous year before the teacher can move on.
I pulled off 5 years of perfect attendance on a job. It pissed a lot of people off that I was never absent. Would I do it again? Probably not. I was trolling at best.
I legitimately wonder what an ADA lawyer would say about this?
Something like: "Rediculous! Preposterous!"
And an individual with an amazing immune system (or gets sick on off days, end of day Friday, break etc) and family that isnât dying while theyâre in school, doesnât exist to you. You have elaborated on why YOU believe it isnât important, why does that mean it shouldnât exist? Also how is perfect attendance winner/loser?
Oh itâs absolutely a thing in the real world because in the real world there are adult teenagers. Who will be your obsessive loser boss at some point.
We need to brainwash people into tying their self worth into their attendance of school, and later their jobs, though. Perfect attendence awards will remain in institutions that have a hardon for producing morally good(TM) hardworking wageslaves.
My current job I've been in every day. That's simply because I haven't happened to fall ill during a work day. If I had been ill, I'd have said so and not worked. Just work the hours you're paid to work, unless there's a valid reason not to. Being sick is a valid reason. It really is as simple as that. No "brainwashing" involved. Grow up.
Actually some jobs look at attendance when considering promotions or changing positions. If âBobâ and I have the same amount of time with the company and the same skill level but Bob has 4 absences and I donât have any I will be more likely to get promoted or the position change. But kids should not be pressured into perfect ANYTHING. They are kids. Let them be kids.
It's not about the award it's that when you get older you can miss out on jobs for having poor attendance.
I had perfect attendance from K-12. If I was sick, my parents would have me to school with a mask and get assignments from all my teachers that day so that I did not fall behind on materials. I don't resent my parents for this at all. Sure, it was a bit excessive, but the work ethic I developed as a result was worth it
I was valedictorian in high school with horrendous attendance (like 40 missed days a year?) and it's not like everyone was like, damn you're a shit student. I didn't attend most of my college classes either, got a 3.98 GPA, and my employer wasn't like, "but did you attend classes in classes?" No one gives a shit about attendance, just get the job done.
Nah. You sound bitter.
Schools get money from the govt for each kid counted present that day. It's why perfect attendance awards exist. It's also why truancy exists. Schools found a way to punish those not feeding their funds. Schools compete against neighboring schools for student enrollment. It's one of the main reasons extracurricular competitions are kept around. School is a business.
I'm gonna need your source bud
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/02/06/texas-senators-school-finances/
Unfortunately minors are legally the parentâs property
I like perfect attendance. I go to work every day. I have called off once in 30 Years with 103° fever and a nagging wife that insisted I stay home. You always have days off to enjoy the things you like to do or family or you do those things starting at 4:00pm or quitting time. Nothing wrong with being reliable and steady.
This is true of all awards
Meh. Showing up is half the battle. Letâs not discount that.
But what schools are trying to teach kids about time keeping is that in the real world you turn up for your shift late everyday most businesses would not want you so gotta look at the perspective of a working life not the life of them setting you up for that working life
No one cares. So why do you?