Question

What if a policy maker comes along with data that shows that school absenteeism is due to a “culture of poverty”.This new policy maker would say that absenteeism is a learned behavior. A child sees his older siblings and cousins cutting school. His caregiver doesn’t go to work. No one cares if the child goes to school or not. How would this policy maker address the problem of absenteeism?

Answer 1

The culture of absenteeism especially due to social learning can have devastating impacts on the society and the community at large. Some of the factors that can be kept in mind by policy makers while addressing this problem are as follows:

• Engaging family members and community members to provide additional support for student attendance
• Spreading awareness about the available resources to help their children in maintaining regular attendance and identify barriers in their participation in supporting attendance.
• Spread awareness and implement actions to inform community members and spread awareness of chronic absenteeism, its dire consequences, considering alternative channels of communication that may prove most effective for reaching out to local stakeholders.
• Incorporate education as a component of culture, reaching out to communities and engaging them in aligning academic and family life. This can be done by engaging community members and families through channels and networks in order to create effective outreach programs.
• The idea is to find the underlying causes for absenteeism and addressing them in order to curb the issue. In the given case, identifying the actual cause behind adult absenteeism at work and catering to the specific issues is something which will lead to catering to the concern from grass-root level. For instance, if inappropriate or non-congenial workplace environment is the cause, then they must be addressed through implementing the necessary policies.