The Ineffectiveness Of The Mandatory Attendance...

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The Ineffectiveness of the Mandatory Attendance Policy The story of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off gives audiences a chance to live vicariously through the main character, Ferris. He’s a young boy full of life and simply needs a ‘day off’’, so he skips school and has fantastical adventures that few of us would even attempt. At the same time, Mr. Rooney (the principal of the high school) stumbles pathetically two steps behind the boy, trying to use this truancy as the final strike—and fuel for Bueller’s expulsion. As thrilling as it is to cheer for the hero and delight in the failed attempts of the antagonist, Mr. Rooney was just doing his job (albeit a bit unorthodoxly and with questionable motivation). It is his job as principal to ensure each child’s future through the gift of education and teach him the consequences of irresponsibility. I understand this and support it wholeheartedly, when it is in regards to children. However, it concerns me that I see some teachers using a mandatory attendance policy here at the University of Tennessee. Although the best intentions are always in place, there are several misconceptions about why students may attend class irregularly and the proper way to encourage them to attend. Discontinuing the use of mandatory attendance policies at UT would shed necessary light on the classes using them, providing the possibility for reform. The real reasons that students don’t show up for class could be diagnosed, and subsequently treated. When we are young, we are raised with expectations of what college will be like. It will be impossibly hard; it will be a drunken adventure; it will be the best years of our lives. Films like Animal House or the Van Wilder series depict crazy plots that we recognize as fictitious, but they still encourage us toward one encasing conclusion: College is much different from high school, and for the first

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