An Imperfect Award for Perfect Attendance

Many schools give an award at the end of each school year to those students who had a perfect attendance record. But the award itself is far from perfect. That’s because such an award is unfair to the students who would have attended every day but could not for reasons beyond their control, such as an illness or injury. So, basically, students are receiving the award just for being lucky. It’s tantamount to giving out an award to people for having blue eyes or brown hair, attributes that they had absolutely nothing to do with. Sure, a student who is lucky enough to be given the opportunity has to put forth the effort to attend school every day. But the chances of having to miss at least one day in nine months is extremely high. Therefore, very few students will even have a shot at perfect attendance. So how much sense does it make to reward it?