Truancy: A Branching Problem Between External Issues of High School Students

Truancy: A Branching Problem Between External Issues of High School Students

Ms. Smith, single mother of a troublesome high school student, is use to seeing the high school's phone number in her recent missed calls list. In her voice mailbox, she has a multitude of automated calls reporting that her son has been missing from classes. Due to the issue of her busy work schedule, she is unable to spend a second to talk to her son about his absences, so the calls simply continue to flood her phone. The matter of the question of ditching a few classes came up to a halting stop when her son was sent a court referral because he was considered to a have chronic truancy problem. Even though each state has adopted their own laws on truancies, the law may not get in the way of student whom are on the pathway to a highschool dropout. From trending research, students need to have a connection to success from a role model and the schools with higher truancy rates are in need of more funding.

For many people, home is considered a secure and safe environment. According to Jane Sigmo, in a perfect world home is where people are taught the basic skills they need to be a respectable citizen. From the time babies are first born into the world they are beginning that learning process from their parents or who is taking care of them. Therefore, this tends to force a lot of stress onto parents because most parents want their child to be better than they were. In a national survey conducted by the U.S Department of Justice there were 17% of people who didn't specifically feel the need to push their son or daughter onto a path of success. Looking at ethical backgrounds of the majority of those 17% showed a pattern between the characteristics. Either the parent had a strong attachment to alcohol/drugs, or they had a physiological problem with them. This is where there tends to be discrepancy because people who choose to be addicted to alcohol or drugs are in a different category than those who may have something like depression. Even though people with physiological problems didn't put those issues on themselves, it doesn't mean they can't find a way to overcome them. Either way, a child will be affected to some extent.

A parent or guardian with either of these problems can't be categorized as a "perfect role model". Young children learn from example, so if their parent/guardian was inconsistent about going to work, the child has the need to feel as if it is okay to not always go to school. With no consistency of a successful routine, the student can begin to feel the easiness of not doing anything productive. This is when a chronic truancy complication begins to takes place because they feel less stress to not be doing anything at all then working hard towards a goal of being a high school graduate.

The more students become truant, or are considered to have a chronic truancy problem leads them into the direction of completely dropping out of school altogether. If there is a failure in the motivation within