Is it cool to play truant

Районная конференция-фестиваль творчества обучающихся  

«EXCELSIOR - 2022»

Секция: иностранные языки

Is it cool to play truant?

Contents.

1. Introduction.          

2. What is truancy?    

3. Why do students play truant?

4. Truancy in the USA.

5. What are the consequences of truancy?

6. Combating truancy.

7.  Truancy in Russian schools

 8. Truancy in our school.

 9. Conclusion

10. Literature.        

 11. Appendix 1                                                                                                

Introduction

        Today a large number of students do not attend  their classes and play truant. They don’t want to come to school after weekends or wonderful holidays. In fact, skipping classes is the problem of the whole society. Sometimes it could lead to cruel actions. Studies show that many children missing their classes without reasons have much more problems with drugs, fights, alcohol and other kinds of violence. If a child often misses school, the behavior may mean that he is trying to cope with some troubles or problems. In our research we tried to find out the basic reasons of truancy in our country and the USA. We wanted to answer the questions: What is truancy? Why do students play truant?  How does truancy impacts on studying? What can we do to prevent truancy?  To get answers to these questions we read articles and surfed the Internet. Also we interviewed the pupils of our school about skipping classes and their attitude to playing truancy. On the basis of the received information we made some conclusions.

       The actuality of this topic is evident. This problem is not only parents and teachers, but to the whole society. The number of students who skip classes without reasons is increasing. We think that the problem of skipping classes must be solved.

     The subject of our study is truancy in American and Russian schools.

     The purpose of our project  is to research the problem of truancy in schools and find out how we can solve this problem in our school.

     To reach the purpose we have set the following tasks:

studying of the truancy in Britain

studying of the truancy in Russia

studying of the reasons of truancy in these countries

to carry out an opinion poll among teenagers in order to find out how often they play truancy and what they think about it.

 What is truancy?      

Truant - noun

1. a lazy , idle person.

2. a pupil who stays away from school without permission.

3. a person who neglects his or her work or duties.

              -verb.

To be or play truant- stay away from school, be absent. ( Webster’s New World College Dictionary.); ▪ (of a pupil) stay away from school without permission or explanation. (English terms diction/)

         Truancy – noun. The act of playing truant, or the state of being truant; as, addicted to truancy. [1913 Webster] ; when students deliberately stay away from school without permission (Dictionary of contemporary English): 

       Truancy is an intentional unreasonable absence from school. The term describes missing lessons by students of their own free will.  It usually does not refer to the absences  related to health. Another term for truancy is playing hooky. Attending school, but not going to class is skipping lesson. In some schools if you play truancy you won`t be able to graduate. In some cases you may receive credit for class attendance, pay a fine or attend summer school.

Why do pupils play truant?

  Truancy is as social as educational and legal problem. It is the result of some factors in a child’s life preventing  regular school attendance. Students play truant for a great  variety of reasons. The most frequent causes of truancy in the UK include:

         School

• uninteresting and unimportant curriculum,

-    bad  relations with teachers ,

• lack of school- parents communication

    Students

• childhood depression              -   low self- esteem
• bad grades                               -  fear of school, teachers and administrators
• feeling socially isolated          -   bulling at school
• language barriers                    -     poor health
• no interest in school               -     taking holidays,
• teenage pregnancy

          Family.

      -   alcoholic parents                  -  financial difficulties

• parents  underestimation of the importance  of education

         Community.

• lack of support for school,
• negative peer influences,
• criminal activity.

Truancy in the USA.

       The president of the National Center for School Engagement says that truancy is a great problem in the USA.  The rates of absences are not the same in different schools. Urban schools have higher rates that country schools. Absence rates often depend  on family poverty.  The surveys by Harvard University show that only about 70% of students in the USA graduate high school. Most of these students prefer playing  truancy. This problem begins even with young pupils. Many of them  come from families which have problems like drug abuse or domestic violence.  And their  parents think  school is unimportant. But by the age these students reach high school, they don`t  keep links with the school.  Dr Ken Seeley persistently persuades schools to concentrate their attention to summer programmes before students start high school. Schools must pay more attention to the students from low income families and with low learning achievements.

        The US develops methods and programmes to combat truancy. They  concern different age students. In  Florida, teachers visit the parents of c truant students home  to stress the importance of school. And if the students don`t quit   truanting, their parents can be arrested as they failed to make their children to attend school.  And students who often miss classes can`t get driving license in Florida and Rhode Island. It was proved to be an effective way of fighting with truancy. The parents whose children missed more than fifteen days for three months might be imprisoned for up to two months. In addition, parents can be fined a very large amount for the truancy of their children. Seattle schools  use the combined weight of schools, courts, and police  to reduce truancy.

      What are the consequences of truancy?

       Some specialists assure that truancy is an accurate predictor of crime and violence. The missing school children are often making the first steps towards the life of problems. The average age of such students is 15 years old.  However, some children begin skipping classes at the age of 10-11. Skipping school is a signal that the child is in trouble, a cry for help. These students are often gang members, smoke, drink alcohol and use drugs. Also they are engaged in vandalism and theft. The girls playing truancy are more often become pregnant and drop out school. Anymore, most habitual truants finally enter the juvenile court system.

       Truants have more marital and employment problems. Truancy is a gateway to serious violent crimes. So, truancy impacts on the students, their friends and families.

         Absence is a great problem for students at school. They never do the tasks which were given at school when they were absent.  It may lead to a significant disadvantage for the remaining part of their school career. These pupils begin to fall behind their friends and often fail to do even simply tasks – sometimes even in writing and reading. Eventually, these pupils can become bored and disappointed with education. These pupils are lost to the school, and can fall into anti-social behaviour and crime.  The children who skip the most time of their education do not keep up with their friends and struggle to catch up.

      Combating Truancy.

      A number of initiatives were introduced by the government to make determined efforts to deal with truancy.  They include regular sweeps of town centers by policemen, education welfare staff and electronic registration. There are various registration systems in schools: with  biometric, card or PIN technologies. They can  record the lateness,  absence  and   presence of students in real-time. Electronic registration makes students to take responsibility for their own attendance. You have to register just one time in the system. The students use their fingertips, cards or  PINs on a specially designed unit. Schools prefer biometric systems.  Because you can`t forget or lost  your finger! To control attendance and help parents fulfill   their responsibilities under the law most local education authorities employ education social workers, The officers often visit the families in which children don`t attend school regularly. Sometimes, in the worst cases, family may be taken to court. Parents have a duty in law their school age children get an education at school. Under the law children must get education from the start of the school year  after their fifth birthday. And they have to attend school and study until the third Friday in June in the school year in which they turn 16. The local education authority may sue the parents whose children do not always attend the school and even take parents to court if their child is constantly late for school. Parents who fail to follow court orders can be fined up to 2,500 or be put in prison for up to 3 months.

      Truancy in Russian schools.

      Officially, truancy has never been the problem in Russia. There are not any official figures are available to show how many students play truant in Russia every year. And we have no the governments’ reports on this problem.  

Our school system was extremely strict during the Soviet times. Teachers, parents and students were interested in turning up for classes. Most pupils  respected and often feared the teachers. But today, the situation is changing.  If a child fails to turn-up, teachers call parents and ask for to explain any absence. But in some cities and countries teenage truancy particularly is a growing trouble. The problem is compounded by the rise of  “social orphans”. There is a threat to Russia’s future, the threat to its national security because of homelessness and neglect of children. In our country the number of street children varies from 2 to 5 million. This fact can cause serious political and social consequences. It is no mere chance that 2008 was the Year of the Family,  2009 - the Year of the Youth and  2010 - the Year of the Teacher. And this year is declared the Year of Mother and Father in the Chuvash Republic. Today, the government of our country pays great attention to the problems of school and youth.  To solve the problems of neglect and homelessness we must  prevent children from skipping  lessons. According to the Law of the Russian Federation “On Education” teachers identify children who are systematically missing or  not attending  school, take measures for their education, work with their parents.

Truancy in our  school.

We decided to ask some questions to the students of our school and to find out what they think about truancy. Here what we can say about students’ attitudes to the problem of truancy. 92 students from 9-11 classes were asked the following questions:

1. What do you think about truancy?

2. Do you play truant?  How often do you do it?

3. Why do you play truant?

4. Do your parents know about skipping classes?

5. How can it affect your study?

6. What can we do to prevent students playing truant?

We can draw the following conclusions:

1. 95 % of students think the truancy is bad.
2. There are students in each class who skipped lessons and girls play truant more often than boys.  30 % of the students never skip school without good reason.
3. The main  reasons of truancy given by our students:

• Boredom and laziness.
• It is hard to wake up in the morning
• In bad mood to go to school
• Family problems
• Problems with classmates
• Conflicts with teachers.
• Not ready for the test.
• Do not like some subjects.
• Do not like the teacher.
• Too tired during the day and that`s why cannot go on past lessons.
• There are more important things to do than the school.

4. 45% of truanting pupils are sure their parents knew they were absent.
5. 15% of students think that truancy hasn’t led to more serious problems.
6. 40 % of students think that teachers should inform parents if the child is absent. They added that at school we use new technologies such as Electronic Diary. It makes easier to inform parents. Requiring notes from parents also helps to combat truancy.

Conclusion.

    In conclusion, we’d like to say some facts which we have found out. We studied much information about the problem of truancy in Russia and  in the USA. We found out that methods of solving this problem in Russia and US are different. It seems to us  ways of solving this problem are more improved in America than in our country. We think Russia should take an experience from the USA. The results of surveys show that students who often miss their classes, show bad results in studying. And   reality shows that there are many reasons why pupils play truant.  The future of our   country completely depends on future generation. We believe, that the government should take care of the youth as much as possible. It must take effective measures so that all children receive a good education and the effective ways of solving this problem must be found.  However , we  think that  truancy has been and will, always be the fact of life, because all students have  different living conditions and each family has its own problems.

Literature.

1. http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/eng_rus/810123/truant
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truancy
3. «The first of September», № 3 2012, Publishing House
4. «Foreign languages at school» № 1 2011
5. «In the world of English» S. D. Romanova «Teaching Publishing», 2012
6. bestreferat.ru
7. ru.wikipedia.org
8. project.1september.ru
9. englishteachers.ru

Appendix 1.