Consequences of Skipping School: Kidnapping

“Should I skip school?” or “Should I skip this class?” is a question that has passed through many teenagers minds during boring classes such as math and history. Even if the student manages to skip class, there are many more consequences than getting a call to home or a talk with the principal. Not only are there academic and home issues, but there are also legal and financial consequences, the loss of connecting with their peers, and other problems such as kidnapping. These are only some of the major consequences of skipping a class or a whole school day.

To begin with, a student who skips class is skipping an important and educational day in their learning career. Every day of school is important because the lessons often build upon each other. If you miss the introductory on a subject in math, you’ll struggle later on as the subject gets more and more complicated. Sooner or later, you realize you’re failing tests and the whole class because you skipped days of important learning.

According to research, only five absences is usually enough for a student’s academic performance to drop. Five more absences would most likely lead to a decreased chance to graduate a particular educational institution: on average, skippers are about 20% less likely to successfully graduate. If a student studies at high school, he or she has a 25% less chance to enter any type of higher education institution. They are also 2.5 times more likely to have to live on welfare compared to their more disciplined peers.

Not only that, but the student could also run into some trouble with the principal. Sooner or later, you realize you’re failing tests and the whole class because you skipped days of important learning. Often, the punishments for skipping a class could be lunch detention or in school suspension. If you skip too many days, and you are in high school, you will most likely be sent to the middle school to relearn what you missed. Not only is that fairly sad that you have to go back to middle school and learn, but it’s also humiliating to you, your class and your fellow peers.

Another consequence is that in which happens at home. Not onlyis there the dreaded taking away of electronics, which may seem like the end of the world to most teenagers, but skipping a class or two may change your families look upon you. You may be viewed as irresponsible and not trusted as much as you used to. This could lead to less freedoms in things like hanging out with your friends or simply going to your next class in school. Due to the lack of trust, you’ll have to be constantly monitored through out the day.

A dreaded consqeuence is the legal consequences. Criminal charges against parents may be possible is the student is caught by any legal authorities.

An increasing number of states are also filing criminal charges against the parents of truant children. For example, dozens of parents in Baltimore were sentenced to jail for their children’s chronic truancy. And one California mother was sentenced to 180 days in county jail after her two kids missed a total of 116 days of school in 2011.

A couple in Virginia even faced criminal charges after their kids were repeatedly tardy for school. The couple faced up to $3,000 in fines under Virginia’s truancy laws after their children were late to school 85 times over the course of several months. Students who are considered truant will be subject to discipline by the school district, which can include being barred from participating in sports or other activities, suspension, or even expulsion from the school.

Increasingly, however, schools are getting tough on truancy by also referring truancy cases to juvenile courts. In Arizona’s Pima County, for example, a student who has three unexcused absences from school is referred to the Center for Juvenile Alternatives, which works with the county’s juvenile court system to offer the student, and the student’s parents, the choice of a diversion program or court-ordered sanctions.

Furthermore, there are also finiancial problems when a student skips school. In the United States, free education is a rare privilege; every single class skipped is worth a certain amount of money.

Whether a student studies at high school, college, or university, it does not matter. The average cost of a skipped class is in the range between $50 to $100. If a student chooses to skip classes regularly, it will cost him or her or his or her parents a lot of money annually, without getting the result: education and knowledge. To add on, students who miss a lot of school, often end up dropping out before graduation. Researchers estimate that High School graduates earn $1,000,000 more in their lifetime than other who didn’t graduate. As these annual average income figures show, the future is dimmer without a high school diploma.

There are also the fines that are charged against the parents, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, which adds on to the expenses. For another example, in Illinois, excessive absences are considered a form of child neglect, a misdemeanor that can carry a penalty for parents of up to 30 days in jail and a $1,500 fine. The law was updated last year to reduce the number of days a student could miss before truancy courts step in.

One of the most feared things that could happen when a child skips school is a kidnapping. Each year, 800,000 missing children, approximately 2,000 children every day, are reported to local law enforcement agencies and the FBI. And without the parent or school knowing where student is, it’s next to impossible to locate where they are. Though it is unknown how long the police will search for a missing child, the case will eventually grow cold and they will stop searching. Every 40 seconds, a child becomes missing or abducted. In comparison, every three seconds, a child is admitted to an emergency room.

Family child abduction is the most common form of abduction in the United States. Almost half of child abductions are kidnappings by a parent or other family relative. These abductions are generally not serious.

More than 25 percent of child abductions are by an acquaintance of the child, generally involving a high percentage of juveniles. This type of abduction carries the highest percentage of injuries.

Less than one quarter of child abductions are by a stranger, with more girls being abducted than boys. This type of abduction is the most dangerous. Approximately 80 percent of child abductions by strangers occur within 1/4 of a mile of the child’s home. Roughly 75 percent of abduction murders occur within 3 hours after the child goes missing.

An overwhelming majority of acquaintance or stranger child abductions victimize girls. More parents fear their child being abducted than they fear car accidents or any other crime against their children. Only one in every 10,000 missing child reports result in the death of the child. The overwhelming majority of non-family child abductions (80 percent) are motivated by sexual intentions. The chance that a child is kidnapped and murdered stands at about 1 in every 347,000. 90 percent of stranger kidnappings are committed by males aged 20-40 years old. Less than 5 percent of children kidnapped by strangers are never found.

Skipping school has many consequences. There are academic and home issues, and there are also legal and financial consequences, the loss of connecting with their peers, and other problems such as kidnapping.

Cite this page