Nine absences mean you're incompetent?

[Artemis]

Incoming personal post !

I miss school. A lot.

Now, my school has the rule where if you miss more than 9 days, you get an "MC" in your classes. "MC" standing for "minimum competency". It doesn't matter whether or not you've got an A in the class, you could have 100% and it would be covered by an MC.

This perturbs me for several reasons. One, nine days is far too few. I have an extremely weak immune system, and so when cold season comes around I am sick nearly 24/7. Now granted, you can attend school with the sniffles, but when you've got a fever of 105, you're staying home. I'd also like to include that doctor's notes have no affect on this rule. The only way to appeal the MC is to take it to the principle, who won't actually do anything about it.

Now I don't cut my classes, almost ever. Once this year due to extenuating circumstances, but aside from that I really don't. The "MC" rule is imposed so that if you cut a certain class 9 times, you essentially flunk. They're not looking at the fact that this rule encourages kids to come to school sick, which makes people like me who catch colds easily even more prone to getting ill more often.

I have A's. I always maintain A's. No matter if I show up or not, I always have. This new school is going to make me seem like a neanderthal due to absences and I'm absolutely not having any part of it. It stresses me out to no end thinking about it, counting them up and praying that I don't get the flu because I cannot stand having low marks, it bothers the hell out of me.

This might sound pretentious but I'm fairly intelligent for my age group and I don't feel it's fair that I should flunk a class while someone else passes just because they showed up everyday. I understand a low attendance rate becomes an issue, but this is seriously out of fucking WHACK!

I mean I may as well start carrying around a bottle of Robitussin !

What's you're opinion of the nine absence rule and do you see anyway for me to get around it?

[Gwedin]

What the Hell. My school has the same 9-day thing (it's 5, 9 or 15... I forget) but a justified absence won't count.

(Here's me rationalising this shit)
I suppose it's a way to motivate you to go to school. Just like how if you're sick when you're older and you don't go to work, there are consequences.

[Artemis]

(10-29-2013 12:39 PM)Gwedin Wrote:  What the Hell. My school has the same 9-day thing (it's 5, 9 or 15... I forget) but a justified absence won't count.

(Here's me rationalising this shit)
I suppose it's a way to motivate you to go to school. Just like how if you're sick when you're older and you don't go to work, there are consequences.

Indeed, indeed. But the difference between school and work is, you can learn the same material from your book in bed when you have a cold, you however cannot do your job from bed when you have a cold, in most cases. You are right though, about the motivation.

[(´・ω・`)]

(10-29-2013 01:15 PM)Artemis Wrote:  

(10-29-2013 12:39 PM)Gwedin Wrote:  What the Hell. My school has the same 9-day thing (it's 5, 9 or 15... I forget) but a justified absence won't count.

(Here's me rationalising this shit)
I suppose it's a way to motivate you to go to school. Just like how if you're sick when you're older and you don't go to work, there are consequences.

Indeed, indeed. But the difference between school and work is, you can learn the same material from your book in bed when you have a cold, you however cannot do your job from bed when you have a cold, in most cases. You are right though, about the motivation.

Unless you work from home, say for Canonical, the Ubuntu developers (spoiler alert here). I can just work whenever the heck I want to, sickness or not.

[Artemis]

(10-29-2013 01:26 PM)IvoTheMagnificent Wrote:  

(10-29-2013 01:15 PM)Artemis Wrote:  

(10-29-2013 12:39 PM)Gwedin Wrote:  What the Hell. My school has the same 9-day thing (it's 5, 9 or 15... I forget) but a justified absence won't count.

(Here's me rationalising this shit)
I suppose it's a way to motivate you to go to school. Just like how if you're sick when you're older and you don't go to work, there are consequences.

Indeed, indeed. But the difference between school and work is, you can learn the same material from your book in bed when you have a cold, you however cannot do your job from bed when you have a cold, in most cases. You are right though, about the motivation.

Unless you work from home, say for Canonical, the Ubuntu developers (spoiler alert here). I can just work whenever the heck I want to, sickness or not.

lucky lucky lucky~ i tried for homeschooling but no dice, my parents won't do it. next closest thing we could find is where i'm going now, which is to a middle college. it's chill aside from the nine day thing, which sucks.

[James Comey]

I like how schools try to refer to students derogatorily as "incompetent" or something similar if they're not doing this or that at school. Just another psychological attempt to mentally harm the student in my eyes.

[brainiac3397]

I realize alot of policies seem to title you incompetent even if it has nothing to do with the material. Probably why recently decided I was just going to start my own business and self-study outside the system. Thus it has pretty much become set that I most likely will not finish college for a while(most likely argue my way into masters or phd program. Take the necessary courses but not take those pesky gen eds. Injust have to figure out how that could work in the US, getting a masters or phd without a bachelors )

Its pretty disturbing really. If you analyze the education system you find that such stupid rules hold more influence than actual knowledge(in a so-called place of "learning". Learning to obey is more like it). And its pretty much everywhere and no matter how much you think about it, you just cant derive any logical reason for it when trying to compade it to "competence".

[Ky]

In response to OP,

No, you've got it all wrong. You would be given an MC for nine days' absence because of their minimal competence. Doesn't that make more sense? :3

[brainiac3397]

minimal competence is too gracious. Absolute lack of competence is a better fit.

[Sunbourn]

My school had a similar system where you could not miss more than 10 days or you would have to make up the time you missed through seat time. From what I heard, you just went in after school and did nothing of value. If you missed so much time that this wasn't feasible then you could consider yourself screwed. I almost never miss school days in early to mid fall or during the spring months, but when late fall and winter roll around I can count on getting sick every two weeks with some sort of bacterial infection. This caused me to get very close to the limit my senior year, and on occasions I had to go in sick just to make sure I didn't go over the limit. It was ridiculous as I did very well in all of my classes, but apparently it doesn't matter in the American public school system whether or not you master the material or not. What matters is that you are good little obedient slave who shows up every day ready to do as you are told. For that I give our public school system a failing grade.

I can't even escape this in college. We have an attendance policy at my specific community college. From what I heard, this is the exception rather than the norm. Therefore I can not study independently and just show up when there is a quiz or test. Most of my classes are online, so it's relevant to all of my classes, but two of them are in person and I am quite peeved by this policy.

[brainiac3397]

My classes take attendance but Im sure the professor wont really notice the fact Ive left the class a few minutes after attendance. Course nobody does this because the class is either worth staying in(due to learning material or because we have a quiz to take, like in my anthro class where we have an easy as hell 2 question quiz on the topic we went over in class. She pretty much even gives the question and answer in the lecture at the beginning and end of lecture), or because there is nothing better to do.

[James Comey]

My school is worse. They're planning on having a limit of 5 absences for each student each quarter. If you have more than 5 in said quarter, you fail the year.

[Sunbourn]

(11-06-2013 10:45 AM)Hansgrohe Wrote:  My school is worse. They're planning on having a limit of 5 absences for each student each quarter. If you have more than 5 in said quarter, you fail the year.

I would have failed 5th grade under that system. I missed two entire weeks when I had pneumonia and I still knew the material better than the rest of the class.

[GamerGurl]

The high school I used to go to had an attendance policy of in the case that you missed at least 7 days, you'd fail the semester. Missing days even included their policy of having an absence for missing at least 15 minutes of class at any point during the day, something I called their stupid absence-tardy policy. At least, to appeal that, you'd have a waiver to fill-out. Something like a doctor's note would help your case, but man, it seems like schools are getting harsher and harsher when it comes to their policies.

[James Comey]

Amen.

[o_oo_e]

Mine put in place a system where if you miss 6 and a half days or more during any semester, you get a 50 F in every class for that semester.

I was actually exempted from this for a legit reason, but it's still stupid.

[GamerGurl]

(11-10-2013 03:30 AM)o_oo_e Wrote:  Mine put in place a system where if you miss 6 and a half days or more during any semester, you get a 50 F in every class for that semester.

I was actually exempted from this for a legit reason, but it's still stupid.

Any reason to miss school is a legit reason. Remember: SCHOOL SUCKS.