Modern technology has brought the revolution in the lifestyles of today human beings. It has turned the society into more casual and less hard working. It also has changed students` attitude towards attending classes. Because of such technological achievements, students feel less responsibility in attending them. However students` presence at regular classes should be mandatory if students want to score good grades, which results college performance, and socialize themselves.
For sure, student`s personality is shaped through attending classes on a regular basis. Responsibility – is what is trained among students by their teachers at classes (Kanar). Better responsibility for their deeds are achieved through understanding the importance to meet deadlines of assignments, as well as valuing personal time. Regular attending classes help students to become more confident in their strengths and abilities. Confidence development is an ongoing process and cannot be so easily achieved, especially if a student plays truant. People get to know what self-confidence is only through cooperating with others, through observing others` behaviors. At classes, teachers guide their students how to build self-reliance through assignments they give, through activities they perform, through tests and evaluations students take at classes (Clay). All these examples show that constant presence at classes is a key not only to good grades, but also to success in personal life. The more a student achieves at classes, the better results he gets, the more he discusses and presents in front of his classmates – the better it is for him, and the more self-confident he becomes. Another consistency – regular attendance of classes brings better academic results. This is confirmed by Thomas and Higbee in their article “The relationship between involvement and success in algebra”. Moreover, this consistent pattern works not only with algebra, but with all disciplines. Of course, being absent from classes often seems to be positive for truants themselves – they can enjoy longer sleep, their breakfast, spend entire day for themselves and their hobbies. However, when it comes to academic results, they are often disappointing. Often, academic record is proportional to irregularity in attending classes – the more a student ignores classes, the more teachers ignore him, which can be often fatal for education process of such a truant. Moreover, repercussions of this are far more reaching – irregular attendance of classes often results in failing grades, imbalance in extra-curricular and academic work with ruined opportunities for the career and affected self-esteem of such students who chose staying home rather than going at classes.
The general conclusion is that missed classes will not give good learning to such students. Truancy will ultimately give them bad scores in their academic records, which will affect their options for future. Moreover, apart from the academic side of the issue, there is also a social side of the phenomenon of students` absence from classes. Classes create a social environment which helps students to form their own patterns of behavior. Classes and breaks between them are perfect options not only for studying process, but also for leisure, finding new friends, cultural and moral development of students. Administration can introduce sanctions for absence from classes, penalties can be applied, teachers can mentor every student and strictly prevent any student`s attempt of being absent from a class. However, all these measures will be mostly in vain. They will be effective in the beginning, but then nothing will stop students from falling into temptation of pretending to be ill instead of presenting a group project. The most important thing is personal understanding of every student that this is important, first of all, for him to regularly attend classes that help him grow in their future as a successful individual.
Works Cited
Clay, T. and Breslow, L. "Why students don’t attend class." MIT Faculty Newsletter, 2006.
Kanar, Carol C. The Confident Student. Cengage Learning, 2013.
Thomas, P. V. and Higbee, J. L. "The relationship between involvement and success in algebra." Journal of College Reading and Learning (2000).
