Skipping school so I don't get detention?!

[RamblinReed]

I have recently reached the 8-time mark of being late for school. One more, and I'll get a detention.

Now, I'd understand the circumstance if I purposely skipped the first periods of school, and came in late, but that is FAR from the case. My mother gets me up to go to school in the morning (in which case I understand everyone's upcoming argument of me being independent), and somedays, when she is sick or stressed, she wakes me up, oh, say, 10 or 20 minutes later. When she does so, I jump out of bed, shove some breakfast in me, and rush on out to school, which is only a 2 minute drive.

The past few nights, my mother has been up late puking, and this morning, it just so happens she woke me up late. Now, instead of missing my first period, and going to the rest, I'm missing all nine of my periods, so I don't get a detention for being late.

Not only am I not skipping a period, but most of the time, I didn't even miss a period. The latest I've EVER been to school was the end of second period. Most of the time I got there several minutes after my first class started.

What I've found ironic in this experience is how detentions are supposed to deter students from negative behaviors, such as skipping school, and yet, I've been ENCOURAGED to skip instead of come in late for the sole fact of getting detention. I know, detentions aren't really that bad a thing, but it's the moral of it. I found it more logical to just skip school and not get detention, rather than go and get one.


Sorry to say, folks, but this wasn't my discussion, this was my story leading into said discussion. I'm sure all of your parents have, at some point or another, used the phrase "life isn't fair." Little Billy across the street gets a brand new bicycle, and all you have is a rusty old one. You ask your parents, but they say no, you can't have another one. After complaining about how someone else has it better off than you, they say "life isn't fair."

And they're right. Life isn't fair. Somebody will always have something you don't, and you will always have something somebody else doesn't. But, when life isn't fair in that sense, why is life fair in the sense of punishment and negative actions?


Instead of my school looking at me and saying "Okay, since you have an actual excuse for being late, and since anytime you are late, you're only late to the first hour of school, we'll let it slide. Just try not to let it happen too too much," they look at me as if I'm just another juvenile delinquent, whose only goal is to get out of school. By making punishment fair and equal, it's interfered with my learning experience, which, shockingly, I actually enjoy.

So, let me hear your opinion. What's your view on "Life isn't fair with the exception of punishment?" Do you agree that our society has that mindset, subconsciously or not?

[clairemckenna]

First I just want to add- My school is ridiculous with trying to handle kids coming to school late. Lately they've "cracked down" so now basically they throw you in In School Suspension if you are even a minute late, so, not only are good, hard working students having to sit in a windowless room and miss class with the kids who skip school, get in fights, or like... break serious rules, but parents, to counteract this punishment, just call their kids in sick if they're going to be late. Schools just fail at handling that situation.

Now to your point- I think the point of punishments isn't to make something "fair" but to teach a lesson. Like if you lose out you'll work to correct the behavior that landed you in trouble in the first place. It's really a natural reaction to punish, it's how we learn to do anything really. We learn not to touch the stove because we're "punished" by being burned. I suppose that's stretching it but it works, right? Correctional measures are necessary to a functioning society, but I think in your case your school (and mine and I'm sure many others) need to not have blanket punishments but take things more on a case by case manner.

[Trey]

Alarm clocks are cheap

[UnfairBear]

I'm in my second year in college, and people always come in late to classes. It doesn't really affect anything except that they miss the first part of what the lecturer was talking about.

I guess in high schools the idea is to teach kids not to be late for things. But the ones who are intentionally late for things are the ones who are going to be late for things in the future anyway. The ones who are accidentally late are going to try not to be late no matter what anyway. And the ones who are punctual will be punctual anyway.

There's already a negative side effect to being late, and that's missing out on information. If that's not an incentive to be on time then nothing is going to stop a person from being late.

Basically what I'm saying is punishing school kids for being late changes very little, and I think it's a stupid practise.

[metallica210]

i know a way around getting detentions for being late

you just tell them that you where sick, or you had a headache. they let it slide. i have been late like 12 times this year, and not a single detention. last year, i missed the bus three times, and i got a detention

[Dimstow]

I completely agree with UnfairBear.

I think, Far too often High School Administrations become more focused on the 'life training' aspect of their rules rather than focusing on the point of public education which is; The ability for student to gain knowledge.

BTW I normally refer to 'Life Training' in high school as 'Baby sitting' but out of fairness I chose to use a new term

[TheIslander]

I am in college now which is somewhat less restricted, but if you miss too many lectures. You get kicked out, no detentions or questions asked. Though, I have found myself in your situation where it is easier to fill in 'absence' forms and forge my parents signature so that I will not get a warning/kicked out of school.
That is the system, deal with it.

Though from previous experience waking up late is usually the product of sleeping late or laziness. When I encountered this problem, I used to sleep early (say 10pm) and wake up early (say 6am), I used to work out or study till 7:55 and be on my bus stop at 8:10. Learn how to manage your time.

[Ryan]

I'm gonna have to agree with Islander on this one. I had to be up for school no later than 6:45, and on my way no later than 7:15. Even if I didn't finish my homework until 4 am the night before, I was up and at 'em @ 6:45 so I could get to school. Invest in an alarm clock if you're having a problem waking up. Come college, there is no mom to wake you.

[JustAnne]

i don't think detention is a bad thing when it comes to punishing being late. maybe that's how people who actually care learn to be on time. what's difficult about waking up with an alarm clock? this way your mom wouldn't have to get up when she's sick and should sleep. you're in high school, when are you gonna get independent? sorry, but that's just my opinion. school starts at a certain time every day. you know how long it takes you to get ready in the morning and go to school so just plan that..

[UnfairBear]

Apr 14, 2010 16:19:24 GMT -5 JustAnne said:

i don't think detention is a bad thing when it comes to punishing being late. maybe that's how people who actually care learn to be on time.

If they care then why do they have to learn to be on time? They already aim to be. Any reason they're not is probably out of their control or accidental at least.

But yeah, I'm not saying you should keep being late or anything, an alarm clock is a real good idea. My mum used to wake me up for school but I've since learned that clock radio = 500% more pleasant.

[bleabot]

I have to wake up at 5:00 for school. Well, I don't really...I suppose I could wake up at 5:30...but whatever. Point is, school starts at 6:20 for me. I've never been late. I have a handy dandy alarm clock. =)

I'm a little bias here because I'm naturally an early bird. I hate sleeping in, so I have little sympathy for people who sleep late. Even if I didn't have an alarm clock I wake up around 5:45 on weekdays out of sheer habit...I know, I'm weird.

[AkeR]

i took psycology for a short period of time at the start of this school year but dropped it again as the work load was to much for me
but one of the few things i managed to pick up was that often, punishments are based around the principle of negative reinforcement.
basically the idea is that Billy does a bad thing and he is then punished with a spanking or a detention or whatever.
the problem arises when the reinforcement doesnt teach billy to be a good boy, it teaches him how to avoid being caught and punished.

so instead of billy not picking on the younger kids for fear of getting a detention, he picks on them but tries harder to not get caught

the point is that schools have got it horribly wrong. they have to understand that detentions are not effective and that students must be motivated to come in on time and not demotivated to do the wrong thing, as this usually just ends up with the student becoming much more sneaky about their method

[Trey]

I think there's still a sale for alarm clocks @ Walmart

[RamblinReed]

Haha, okay, okay. I see a common theme in everybody's posts. I've come to the realization that I haven't been as responsible as someone my age should. Might as well start now, 'eh? Better late than never?

For the sake of the discussion, let's revert to debating about school punishment systems, and maybe different ways to encourage students to do the right thing.

[stephen5000]

None of the schools I ever went to had a penalty for being late. And frankly, I don't really see why they would need one. As some people have said above, the biggest reason to not be late is because you would miss part of the class. In the case that the student doesn't actually want to be there, I think the administration should have bigger things to worry about than punctuality.

In university, no one cares about minor things like punctuality. Where I went, no one cared even if you didn't come to class at all. If a student didn't feel he/she was not getting anything out of a lecture they would just not attend. Since you are marked solely on assignments and exams, attendance isn't important. (Despite this I always made a point to attend all of the lectures.)

With regards to discipline and punishment in school, I don't really understand it. I had no need of it, as I always worked hard and followed the rules out of a sense of duty. (I guess I was brainwashed or something.)

My dad referred to schools are prisons, and while I didn't agree with him while I was in school, I kind of do now. How they are run seems more to instill the feeling of absolute submission to authority rather than as a place of learning and exchange of ideas. The mere fact that detention exists at all is good evidence of this, especially when it is applied to something as trivial as being late for class.

[Trey]

Punishing kids for being late should be something the school faculty should do to elementary and middle school kids. After that, it should be about teaching kids to be responsible. If I didn't get up to my alarm, my dad would come in my room and say, "GET UP! TIME FOR SCHOOL!", not "Hey, Trey.. Wakey wakey! Come eat some breakfast!" It's a learning process, not a punishment. It's not like my dad's gonna spank me if I get up late xD

Remember guys, you're not kids; you're adults in training!

[rialvestro]

To be perfectly honest, it just sounds like you're trying to blame your mom for being late.

And skipping school to avoid being late so you won't get detention isn't really logical either because you'll be in more trouble that way than if you had just shown up late.

Unless you have a sleeping dissorder like I do which is a ligitimate medal reason why I offten fail to go to bed early and wake up on time, you really don't have an excuse to be late for school.

I actully needed my dad to wake me up every morning because if he didn't I would of never went to school on time and even with him waking me up I was offten late for the bus just because my mind would be awake but my body would refuse to move.

Now you wanna talk about something that really isn't fair. When I was in high school if a student skips a class they call your house alerting your parrents you ditched school the same night. I was working and my job interfeared with school hours however the only class I was missing I got credit for at work anyway because it was a drama class and I work in theater. I got the call home and the next day recived a detention slip.

The unfair part about this was that I had cleared my absence with the school a week earlier, and signed out the day of. Being 18 at the time I was allowed to do this without my parent's consent and the school was well aware of my age. Everything was done perfectly according to school rules and I still got the detention for skipping class.

The first time it happened I figured it was just a mistake, went to the office to speak to the principal about it, he agreed it was a mistake and I never had to serve the detention. However this continued to happen every time I went threw all the trouble to clear the absense for work and eventually I just stopped trying and left campus without ever signing out to clear where I was going.

I just gave them a copy of my work schedual and told them I wasn't going to serve any detentions for missing the days I had to work durring school hours.

I don't know if everyone could get away with this sort of thing, I think it just helped me that my dad works there and everyone knows who I am. Like a kid is really going to ditch school when his father works there and will be the first to find out about it.

Pluse, it helped freshman year while all the other kids in my class had 0 clue where anything was, I had allready been around the school many times before and had a better idea of where things were than most people. Oh course I did have to adjest to the fact that I could no longer hang out in the staff only areas of the school durring school hours.

First day of high school I went into the teacher's lounge at lunch to watch TV knowing they had cable in there as that's where I tend to hang out while my dad's working. I also got in trouble for getting soda out of the mantinance building one day. (the soda machine in there belongs to my dad so it didn't cost me anything to use it and he said I could.)

I could of used the fact that I basically had access to the school after the teachers were gone to cheat on tests but I never did. The closest I came to it was looking at the answers to a test I had already taken and suposidly failed only to find out that I had just barly passes. The teacher of that class was not very good, no one liked, her and she failed the entire class on that same test. Really funny part is she didn't even use the test from the book, she made her own and a couple of the questions on it didn't even have answers. She had intentionally designed a test no one could pass. I don't really remember much of except it was a history test and one of the questions was looking at a picture, "what's the name of the soldier in the picture?" It was a bit more descriptive about which soldier but the guy didn't have a name listed anywhere and there was no option for "no name listed" the answer sheet oddly had a name for him which I can't remember but the name wasn't listed anywhere where someone would know it. It was like a test of guess what fake answer the teacher wanted to use for this question which has no real answer.

Probly just had the answer sheet so she had something to turn into the school board, they would of never checked it. But even the answers I had marked right were checked as wrong according to that mockary of an answer sheet. And every student's test was like that, there was only one person who failed but that isn't saying much when the test was so obviously fake anyway.

[brumagem]

Apr 14, 2010 21:29:32 GMT -5 rialvestro said:

To be perfectly honest, it just sounds like you're trying to blame your mom for being late.

And skipping school to avoid...

...only one person who failed but that isn't saying much when the test was so obviously fake anyway.

Long post is looooooong.

Sounds like your school suffers from a pretty poor administration faculty, it doesn't sound like it has anything to do with the structure and rules thereof.

[JustAnne]

coming in late interrupts class and the teacher teaching. it's annoying how so many people (at my school) think they can come in whenever they want. i actually care to learn and so I am on time every morning. to me, it's just disrespectful to the teacher and the other students who want to learn if there are constantly people coming in late. i think there should be more punishments for being late, besides the fact that at my school no one actually notices it except for teachers who just write those students down as missing. they don't ever get into real trouble so yeah. it's annoying.

[rialvestro]

In a real job if you show up late, some employers dock your pay for the amount of time you were late. Makes perfect sense in an hourly job, why get paid for time you weren't there.

Maybe schools should lower the grades of late students. After all school is just to prepair students for real jobs.

School should be alot more like having a real job.