How an Empty Chair at School Becomes an Empty Claim: A Discussion of Absence From School and Its Causality

ABSTRACT

Interventions targeting absence from school justify themselves with the claim that absence causes negative effects or prevents good effects. I argue that these are empty claims. I propose that absence as a cause makes sense in two ways: (1) in the context of prevention, if we take into consideration our expectations of what would have taken place, had the child gone to school, and what did take place for the child instead, and (2) in the context of responses to absence. Both interpretations lead to a conception where absence, instead of being a direct cause, rather accrues consequences from our responses to it. I use these alternatives to argue that responses to absence justified with the empty claim contribute to the results that the literature has so far claimed absence to have. Absence is not the problem, it may only be the sign of one.

KEYWORDS:

• Absence
• absence from school
• causality
• critique
• expectation
• philosophy
• prevention

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This emphasis on absences noticed also helps us sidestep the philosophical issue of too many causal powers (Wolff et al., 2010). This is the issue that there are a great many things absent from any situation, such as the absence of fire in your hair right now. If all such absences were allowed causal power, then everything is present positively or negatively: either fire-in-hair is present or non-fire-in-hair is present.

2 This corresponds closely to the Cambridge dictionary definition of absence: “not being where you are expected to be”, “a being away”, or “a non-existence” – https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/absence accessed 21 October 2019.

3 This may be extended to all sorts of causes in biological and human endeavours, as the effects of something often do not become apparent until much later, when the “right” conditions are present. I tend to think that the total cause is the total situation, making all causal claims a practical endeavour, rather than a truth-claiming one (see Hitchcock & Knobe, 2009; Mackie, 1965).

4 I am not alone in my critique of this. The literature itself includes such a critique. For example, Elliott and Place (2019) note in their review that there has been a tendency to punish absences which are within the child’s control (truancy) and to be lenient towards absences beyond the child’s control (illness, anxiety) (Elliott & Place, 2019).

5 https://www.attendanceworks.org/mission/ – site accessed 12. March 2019.

6 https://www.attendanceworks.org/resources/messaging/making-the-case/ – site accessed 25 October 2018.

7 https://www.attendanceworks.org/chronic-absence/the-problem/10-facts-about-school-attendance/ – site accessed 25 October 2018.

8 Alternate articles about the events are available online. See for example: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/woman-jailed-over-truancy-fines-found-dead-in-cell/.