Dad Calls Out Schools For Still Having Perfect Attendance Awards, Goes Viral

Remember those perfect attendance awards they would give out sometimes in school? Did you know they are still alive and kicking? On the surface, it does sort of seem like a participation award and not anything alarming. Until you remember how often kids get sick. So to get this award, you would have to come in no matter how ill you are that day.

TikToker and educator, the Speech Prof shared his surprise that at his son's school, they were still giving out awards for not missing any classes. He went viral for asking a very pertinent question, namely, why have we learned zero lessons from the pandemic and are still incentivizing kids to come to school sick?

"My son won an award for being a good reader. And at that ceremony, they also gave out perfect attendance awards. And I was like, 'How? How are we still doing this after what we just went through and are still going through?"

"How are we rewarding students for something that's beyond their control?' And I realize that it all comes down to funding, but in the current state of the world we live in, should we really be encouraging parents to send their sick kids to school? Is that the message we should be sending? Or should we be rewarding the students that are responsible citizens for staying home when they're ill, instead of coming to school and getting their classmates sick? Because what's the lesson that we're teaching children? That they should feel guilty for getting sick that they're somehow less than? They're not worthy of an award? Simply because they caught a cold?"

This dad in this video isn’t actually alone in wondering what are the risks of having sick kids come to school. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also states in its guidelines for school administrators, that sick children should stay at home for their own safety and the safety of others. Now, I am not an expert on this, but I think it’s safe to say that the CDC kind of is, so school administrators really do need to consider exactly what they are promoting.

Many adults do still go to work when sick. Sometimes, they don’t have a choice, particularly if their job doesn’t provide adequate sick leave. But there are many adults who come in sick even if they have every right to stay home. Psychologists and virologists call this presenteeism, where a person feels the need to be present at work just for the sake of it. And where did the adults learn this? Some researchers believe that the social pressure to always attend school follows the person into adulthood and creates literally unhealthy behavioral patterns.

We reached out to the creator of the video, The Speech Prof to ask some follow-up questions. To start with, we inquired about alternatives to perfect attendance. “I think awarding children for actual positive things they have control over would be a good start. Good citizenship (for things like helping a friend, standing up to bullying, etc), effort, improvement, etc. Awards that don't inherently exclude children with chronic illnesses or who have non-Christian religious holidays. So, additional awards that actively reward students for things that they do have control over so they can feel like they had agency in the accomplishment and that are separate from the academic awards so that every child can still feel like they have a chance to win.”

“I think it all comes down to money. For some inane reason, the formula for school funding remains identical in most states as it did pre-pandemic and is tied directly to attendance. Don’t get me wrong, I firmly believe attendance is important and should be encouraged, but not in a way that teaches children to devalue their health (and their mental health),” he added when we inquired about the root cause of such awards.

Presenteeism isn’t necessarily always a negative sign. In smaller workplaces, even when there is no managerial pressure to show up, employees will often stay at their station longer than they need to be or come in sick. These same employees will not have this sort of behavior at a larger company. Researchers believe that people who feel closer to their coworkers, which is more common in small companies, don’t mind being at work as much. Similarly, in small offices, coworkers might be more accommodating of a sick colleague, even allowing naps and other actions to assist with their recovery while not taking a sick day.

But that aside, teaching kids that it's okay to be sick around others is truly not a great idea. The most common place for a person to catch a disease in most developed countries is the workplace. A 2014 survey by Canada Life Insurance found that over 80% of ill respondents got infected at the workplace. Now, remote work may have lowered these numbers, but we need to remember why we were all working remotely in the first place. So let's pass on good behaviors to our kids, it might literally save lives.