Don't Blame Teachers If Nobody Is Making Kids Go to Class
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses why holding teachers responsible for student attendance is unfair when schools lack effective systems to get students to class in the first place.
Key Takeaways
- Students roaming hallways is a systems failure - When kids aren't in class, it's not because teachers aren't engaging enough — it's because nobody is enforcing attendance
- The most interesting lesson can't compete with freedom - Even the best teacher can't outcompete the appeal of wandering the halls with no consequences
- Schools need attendance enforcement - Without systems to ensure students are in class, blaming teachers for empty seats is misplaced
Transcript
If students are roaming the hallways and not going to class, it's probably because the teachers aren't making their lessons interesting enough, right?
No.
And like, this could be my shortest video ever.
I could stop there and say, no, that is not the reason students are not going to class.
The reason students aren't going to class is because nobody's making them, right?
If you have a school environment where kids can just not go to class, they can wander the halls and nobody does anything.
There is no consequence.
Maybe somebody talks to them, but then they're sent on their way to continue skipping class.
What do you think high school kids are going to do?
They are going to skip class.
And no level of excitement in the lesson is going to make up for that right no level of engaging interesting instruction can make up for the distractions that students can find on their phones in video games skipping class getting into fights like all of the things that happen outside of the classroom just have more potential to be more fun than school does right school is is work and of course we should make it as fun as possible of course we should make it as engaging as possible learning doesn't have to be miserable learning can be fun but we cannot be in the business of trying to compete with everything else if you want kids to go to class make them go to class and then do what you can to make class fun don't act like if we make class fun enough kids will just show up and we'll never skip class because that is not how it works let me know what you think