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Absenteeism and Truancy Issues: Are Mentoring Programs Funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention the Answer?

2014; Oxford University Press; Volume: 36; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/cs/cdu013

1545-682X

LaTra Rogers,

Adolescent and Pediatric Healthcare

Ever since the first and oldest school in America, the Boston Latin School, was founded on April 23, 1635, by the Town of Boston (Boston Latin School Association, n.d.), students have probably thought about finding ways to skip school. Today, student truancy continues to be one of the most serious and problematic issues for secondary schools across the nation (Jenkins, 1995; Teasley, 2004). “Playing hooky” from school has generally been viewed as comical or amusing behavior. Two of the earliest examples of American literature, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark Twain, portray two young American pioneer folk icons repeatedly skipping school to go on astonishing and fascinating adventures. People of that and subsequent generations saw these adventures as fun and courageous, instead of what they really were: children engaging in unsupervised, dangerous, and what we would...