Effects of Childs Deviant Behavior on their Success at School - Research Paper Example

How does a child’s deviant behavior in different situations affect their success rate in high school?

Introduction

As many researchers and authors have defined deviant behavior, they have referred it to as the behavior that goes against the norm or one that violates the norms of the society. By violating the norm is the legal rules, understandings, and the requirements or the expectations of the societal systems. There are other definitions of this term, according to the many existing sociology theories, such as the strain typology, the conflict theory, structural functionalism and the labeling theories. The norms of the society are inherent in all situations in peer groups, work teams, national societies, families, couples, and schools. However, the normative legal rules are a category of norms whose violations comprises the deviant behavior. Deviant behavior has been considered as antisocial behavior different from the expected societal rules. In this case, a particular way of behaving is not accepted in the social groups if the person does not behave as others or as a member of the social group or the society. Child deviant behaviors as very ubiquitous in different situations such as their homes, churches, and schools because of various factors. This deviance behavior in childhood has greatly affected the children’s performances and success rates in high school. Therefore, this essay shall deeply focus on how the child’s deviant behaviors in different situations affect their success rates in high school.

Literature review

Alienation is the main factor that affects the rates of the deviant children in high school. This is a mentality gained while transiting from primary school to high school. According to research conducted by Clinard and Meier on the sociology deviant, it reveals that the theory of labeling in the classroom has been applied to explain alienation and deviant traits (Clinard and Meier). This happens between the poorly performing and the good performers. The poor performers have been labeled as bad. They have deviated from performing what is referred to as good performance. As a result of high school, the individuals are labeled as the criminals of success. Therefore, they fear to get close to their teachers and good students because of the existing stigmatization and discomfort. Thus they develop low self-esteem which affects their performances. Research conducted on the effects of high self-esteem on academic performances reveal that better or excellent performances are attributed to high self-esteem. Another research reveals that 2/3 of these students could not take examinations of their level grade despite how hard they studied (Ferguson). Also, the poor performers have the bottom based performances of their fellow students, because of isolation, they have the highest absenteeism rates, and they feel not belonging to the extent of failing to attend classes. The research further revealed that only an approximate of 20-25% level high school who had a certificate of completion as compared to other youths, were school dropouts. This feeling of isolation, alienation or not belonging as a result of the bad student has been said that it has greatly affected the performances of many students or lowering their success rates (Miller et al.).

In some parts of the world, gender has been greatly associated with behavior deviance. Some students especially the male gender are said to be behavioral deviant because of the societal pressure on them as shown by research conducted by Pahlke et al. (Pahlke et al.).They are pressured to be the superior or the major being than the females. This gives them a lot of power. Thus they can bully the females in school, sexually assault them and even physical fight them because of their vulnerability or weakness as indicated by Klostermann et al. (Klostermann et al.). Because of this, the females concentrate on the depression posed unto them by the male gender thus performing poorly. On the other hand, the male gender associated with the characteristics of deviant students such as bullying and sexual assaults are more attracted to those things than their studies thus performing poorly or develop low rates of attaining success (Tichovolsky et al.).

Researchers have agreed that the performance and the rate of success of many children in high school are affected by the transition to high school. They researched the predictive of the poor academic performances and deviant behavior caused by poor parenting (Tichovolsky et al.). They connected and tested the five theories that are associated with low performance and poor parenting. The research found out that many children tend to deviate as they are transiting from primary schools to high schools. This is quite challenging because it is when they are undergoing their adolescence stages. They are misdirected by their peers because they have their norms that they identify themselves with as shown by Miller et al in their research (Miller et al.). Through this, they are affected in their studies resulting into academic drops. This is because there are different academic demands and adolescents requirements and the surrounding characteristics of high schools that are unbalanced. They tend to concentrate much on their peer's requirements such as fitting into peer groups. Thus they can start smoking, alcohol addicts and other deviant behaviors which affect their performance and may even result in school dropout .

Recent research has indicated that patterns have started to be predicted for the deviance behaviors to explain why the deviant students have more outcome negative and slow success rates. Some researchers have attributed the deviant students with naturally low IQ. They believe deviant students from childhood have attained natural low IQ thus low rates of attaining success in high schools .

The development of social skills and interpersonal relationships of students is a great thing in an academic environment. Recent research shows that high school student-teacher relationship is supposed to be autonomous. Deviant children in primary schools were closely monitored by their teachers as shown by Clinard and Meier in their research on sociology and deviant behaviors (Clinard and Meier). In high school, the teachers are far from their students, more so for the transiting ones. The research further revealed that the independence of students makes them deviate from the norms of the school thus committing illegal things - deviating from their studies resulting in a decrease of their performance rates. Probably, the less dependency on the teachers is quite unbeneficial to the children. This is because it is a progressive regressive getting deeper into the adolescents needs to link them with their positive interpersonal relations even lowering their rates in learning. Research by Miller et al. support that high rates of success in high school are attributed by teacher-student relationships which reflects the student’s success potential in academics (Miller et al.). This also has been reflected in the Cornell process motivation model, which supports that the teachers directly affects the students’ self-esteem, which directly influences their academic outcomes.

The families of the students have direct accountability of the students’ performances as shown by research (Tichovolsky et al.). Deviance students get misbehaving traits from their homes. This could be as a result of their parents’ treatments, social status, and siblings’ relationship. Many deviant students get too low self - esteem if they come from low-income families or low-status family. Also, the treatment by their parents could account for their performances. If they are treated like sluggards, no time for their homework, they start deviating from school activities, absenteeism, not participating which credits to their low performances. Most parents of deviant high school students tend to compare them with their siblings who are good students. Through Mondemakers’ studies, it is indicated that the children get to be stigmatized thus affecting their outcome results or performance rates (Mandemakers and Kalmijn). Also, deviant students do not often communicate with their parents; this is because of their emotional problems of fear or bad behaviors. Communication with parents often will aid to exhibit classroom problems to their parents, thus improving their success rates.

Research reveals that the number of siblings in a family may result in deviance behavior of a student. The many the siblings the less the attention one may get on the development of behavior, thus developing a deviant behavior such as not paying keen attention to school work. This may include, unpreparedness to school and classes, attending school on all school days, bullying others, theft, drug abuse and use of abusive language or being physically violent. The research further indicates that children attention decreases as their sibship size increase (Mandemakers and Kalmijn). Thus every kid adopts his or her behavior thus lacking good moral bringing. This deviant behavior affects them in school because of the less attention to their studies or academics, thus developing a slow rate of success.

The behavior of a student may have resulted from his or her parents being divorced thus they operate from a two parenthood house. This picture to the fellow peers or schoolmates stigmatizes a lot. To develop a defense mechanism as Brody and Forehand reveal, they decide to be deviant, not caring about their studies because they think no one either parents or relatives care (Brody and Forehand). This affects their academic performances. This is because they like their parental support in academics hence deviating from academics things that are recommended to poor behaviors such drug addicts, thugs and other ways of moral decadence (Mandemakers and Kalmijn).

Scholars further reveal that deviant students are greatly associated with school problems. As school problems increase the performances of the student is inversely proportioned to their studies. Many deviant high scholars tend to be involved with the school's unexpected things such as smoking, involved with theft, sneaking from school, disruptions and abusive languages such as bullying (Ferguson).With these behaviors, they ought to be punished and disciplined accordingly. While attending to their punishments, the non-deviant students are learning to move ahead of them, thus missing some of the classes. Through this, they get to affect their learning rates and is also their performance and success rates.

Deviant students with the behaviors of drug abuse tend to have lower performances. The Miller et al. explain that such students are addicted to drugs than they are addicted to classrooms, this increases absenteeism, or absent-minded thus developing slow rates of success in school. This could be through loss of memory, truancy and other drug effects caused by the drug abuse as Ferguson’s study explain (Ferguson). This affects their academic performances even luring them into other deviant behaviors such as theft which increases their absenteeism rates in school thus performing poorly.

The deviant students are less likely to prepare for school. They are reported to be always depressed about their problems; emotions do not care at all about their performances. This is because they have got less attention to their studies which affect their success rates. They will score lowly in their academics. Also, they do not prepare for college. Their studies end in high school because they are greatly associated with school dropouts or poor performances hence they do not achieve to succeed high school (Clinard and Meier).

Deviant of school behaviors such as disruption of learning and high rates of absenteeism attribute to their low rates of learning. The poor performances or slow learning rates of the students are attributed to their disruption behaviors of learning such commission of strikes in which they mostly tend to appear at the front (Miller et al.). Through this, they disrupt learning to the extent of being sent away from school thus missing a lot of classes. Also, their rate of absenteeism makes them lose a lot of classwork because a lot of school hours are lost when they are out of school. Therefore, this behavior is directly attributed to poor performances and the low rates of success.

In conclusion, deviance behavior is directly proportional to the student’s performance. This is because of several factors that have been attributed to lower their rates of success. Some of the factors alienation from the non-deviant students which greatly causes stigmatization to them to the extent of fearing to do good. The second factor is the development of the social and interpersonal connections to their classmates as well as their teachers. They have weak bonds to develop social relationships thus fearing as the inferior from the rest of the students. This inner inferiority directly affects their performances. They are perceived as the inferior in everything; in behavior and academic performances. Thirdly, their IQ has been found to be naturally low. The mentality of their deviant behavior is mentally gained hence lowering their IQ naturally thus making their success rates low or poor. Parental bring up of children can adversely affect their behavior. It is notable that less caring parents and divorced parents make their children operate from a two parent household house affects the children. Lastly, another factor of deviance that makes a student in high school decline in attaining the academic excellence is the transition to high school. This has greatly affected students’ behavior as well as performances. This is the time when students are adjusting to adolescence stages, new environment, and great academic requirement. With this attempts to adjust there exists unbalance of the three such that students tend to develop deviant behaviors as they are trying to fit the peer's groups and its demands. Thus affecting or paralyzing their performance