School Attendance: Punishing Sickness, and other schooly issues
My brother wasn't feeling well, so he stayed home from school today (the schools had a two-hour delay because of the high winds last night knocking power lines down and such, so mum and dad weren't too worried). He told me that he has these...points and that every time he's absent, they go down and are unable to be made up. They also become a grade at the end of the semester.
It's one of a lot of things that I've been noticing about schools lately. My own school had a policy where you had six excused absenses, then four after that that you would have to make up. If you were absent any more than that, you failed the class immediately. Their excuse was that they were making an environment exactly like if you had an actual job (which would get me into our shitty health care and how the US has supremely shitty sick policies).
I understand that a lot of students skip, and this is obviously a deterrant for them. Still, it really feels like they're just punishing the kids for getting sick. I asked my brother and he thinks they get the points back if they have a doctor's excuse, but he's not sure. :/ A lot of kids have doctor/dentist/ortho appointments, and I know my friend's son has to go to Pittsburgh once a month for his ortho work.
Now, even if a doctor's excuse did get the points back, who has the time or the money to take their kid to the doc's every time they get sick? Kids get colds and such all the time, and I know my mother never took us to the doctor unless we got worse. So if you get a cold or another sickness that you wouldn't want them spreading amongst the other children (any more than they've prolly already done), you're screwed. You either take the point loss or you go to school sick.
I'm sure I've told you about the time I went to work with practically no voice for a week. I don't have sick days, so if I had stayed out until I got my voice back they'd have wanted a doctor's excuse before they'd let me come back to work. I don't have health care. :/ THAT wasn't gonna happen.
Basically no one in America is allowed to be sick, regardless of age.
Again, this is about my brother's school. :/ I went to his orientation with him and our parents, and the principal had this (really rather crappily done) PowerPoint presentation. On it was that he had done away with extra credit.
I kinda went O.o at first, and it only got worse once he explained his reasoning behind it. Apparently, he believes that students only use extra credit so that they can "pick and choose" what regular assignments to do, then use the extra credit to boost their grade back into something reasonable.
I very carefully didn't call bullshit, but only because I'm sure some students DO. There's always some and he had to have some reason for believing this. Still, in my eyes and how I always used it, extra credit was when you were doing rather poorly in a class and it was offered to you by the teacher who deemed you worthy of a chance. You did your assignments, worked hard, and this was a chance to get your grade a little better. If you didn't do jack in class, the teacher didn't give it to you. Simple as that.
This is more something I read in the paper than anything happening here (that I know of). A school pretty much abolished homework. It was an inner city school and the reasons for it were that homework was an unnecessary stress on the kids that had to go home and didn't have the time to sit down and do it. Apparently homework didn't help much anyway, statistics-wise.
I'm not sure how I felt on that, mostly because that's kinda how it was through my high school. We were given work in class and if you didn't finish it, then it was homework, otherwise you were fine. We didn't even have study hall time to do anything, either.
I guess if you understood it, then you'd finish it in class, and if you didn't, then you'd have it to take home to your parents. I don't know how much help pages of redundant problems are anyway.
Anyway, just wanted some input. XD I'm curious about all this.
It's one of a lot of things that I've been noticing about schools lately. My own school had a policy where you had six excused absenses, then four after that that you would have to make up. If you were absent any more than that, you failed the class immediately. Their excuse was that they were making an environment exactly like if you had an actual job (which would get me into our shitty health care and how the US has supremely shitty sick policies).
I understand that a lot of students skip, and this is obviously a deterrant for them. Still, it really feels like they're just punishing the kids for getting sick. I asked my brother and he thinks they get the points back if they have a doctor's excuse, but he's not sure. :/ A lot of kids have doctor/dentist/ortho appointments, and I know my friend's son has to go to Pittsburgh once a month for his ortho work.
Now, even if a doctor's excuse did get the points back, who has the time or the money to take their kid to the doc's every time they get sick? Kids get colds and such all the time, and I know my mother never took us to the doctor unless we got worse. So if you get a cold or another sickness that you wouldn't want them spreading amongst the other children (any more than they've prolly already done), you're screwed. You either take the point loss or you go to school sick.
I'm sure I've told you about the time I went to work with practically no voice for a week. I don't have sick days, so if I had stayed out until I got my voice back they'd have wanted a doctor's excuse before they'd let me come back to work. I don't have health care. :/ THAT wasn't gonna happen.
Basically no one in America is allowed to be sick, regardless of age.
Again, this is about my brother's school. :/ I went to his orientation with him and our parents, and the principal had this (really rather crappily done) PowerPoint presentation. On it was that he had done away with extra credit.
I kinda went O.o at first, and it only got worse once he explained his reasoning behind it. Apparently, he believes that students only use extra credit so that they can "pick and choose" what regular assignments to do, then use the extra credit to boost their grade back into something reasonable.
I very carefully didn't call bullshit, but only because I'm sure some students DO. There's always some and he had to have some reason for believing this. Still, in my eyes and how I always used it, extra credit was when you were doing rather poorly in a class and it was offered to you by the teacher who deemed you worthy of a chance. You did your assignments, worked hard, and this was a chance to get your grade a little better. If you didn't do jack in class, the teacher didn't give it to you. Simple as that.
This is more something I read in the paper than anything happening here (that I know of). A school pretty much abolished homework. It was an inner city school and the reasons for it were that homework was an unnecessary stress on the kids that had to go home and didn't have the time to sit down and do it. Apparently homework didn't help much anyway, statistics-wise.
I'm not sure how I felt on that, mostly because that's kinda how it was through my high school. We were given work in class and if you didn't finish it, then it was homework, otherwise you were fine. We didn't even have study hall time to do anything, either.
I guess if you understood it, then you'd finish it in class, and if you didn't, then you'd have it to take home to your parents. I don't know how much help pages of redundant problems are anyway.
Anyway, just wanted some input. XD I'm curious about all this.