Shouldn't We Be in School Right Now?: Difference between revisions

Sub-trope of [[The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything]]. (think of it as The Students Who Don't Go To School)

{{examples}}

* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'' (in the manga, at least): The two major ''Yu-Gi-Oh: Duelist'' arcs take place during school breaks specifically so Yugi can attend, and other arcs take place in only a short time, or after/during school.

** ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series|Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series]]'' parodied the anime version with Joey wondering why they turn up at all.

* In ''[[My-HiME]]'', while most of the HiMEs go to the Academy if they're not employed there, Natsuki is on the rolls but rarely attends class. Nobody makes an issue of it, since it's a [[School for Scheming]] and Natsuki's involved in chasing down her past, but {{spoiler|in the end, when Natsuki wants to go [[Walking the Earth]] on a [[Journey to Find Oneself|Journey To Find Herself]], she is told quite firmly that she needs to make up all the schooling she's missed}}. Also, near the end, about half the students (including {{spoiler|[[Student Council President]] Shizuru}}) stop attending at all, because the school's half-destroyed, the [[Masquerade]] has [[Broken Masquerade|completely collapsed]] and there's essentially a war going on; around that point, the school closes and those not involved in the conflict go home.

* ''[[Animorphs]]'': The team goes to great lengths to make missions possible or delay them when they coincide with school hours, eventually {{spoiler|asking the Chee to impersonate them when necessary}}.

* ''Akiko on the Planet Smoo'' has a robotic doppelganger take her place over the course of the adventure, since she's gone in real-time.

* ''The Saturdays'', the first book in the Melendy Quartet, has the Melendys form a club to pool their resources during the week so that they can take turns going into the city on an adventure every Saturday. The entire book is thus spent dealing exclusively with what the kids do on Saturdays.

* Subverted in ''[[Big Bad Beetleborgs]]''; one episode involved them having to keep ducking out during class.

* ''[[The Secret Life of the American Teenager]]'' frequently features the characters in school...they just never actually go to ''classes''.

{{quote|'''Cory:''' You know we really should have taken more classes during our senior year. We have entirely way too much time on our hands.}}

* ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]'': You have to graduate before you're allowed to adventure, since the "adventuring" is done as a member of an elite mercenary force.

* While nobody remembers that Sora exists during the missing year in ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'', Riku's only excuse was [[Word of God|being presumed missing or dead]], and Kairi and Selphie do attend school.

* In ''[[Bangai-O]]'', Riki's prolonged absence from school (to defeat the Cosmo Gang with his sister Mami's help) eventually results in his health teacher tracking him down. [[Serious Business|With one of the Cosmo Gang's robots]]. Not that the former cares, since he's technically training to become a policeman...

* The below-mentioned example from the Pokémon anime is inverted in ''[[Manly Guys Doing Manly Things]]'', where Jared's parents thought of him as a failure because he actually ''wanted'' to stay in school rather than become a Pokémon trainer.

* ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'' goes even further, since the only reason for their actions is that it's summer, except of course for the Winter Break Christmas Special.

* ''[[South Park]]'': Along with deconstructing what it would be like for three eight-year-old boys to watch one of their closest friends die, "Kenny Dies" actually addresses all the school days Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman presumably (considering how much time they spend in places like Canada, California, Iraq, Peru, Imaginationland and Afghanistan) miss, revealing that they oftentimes cut class to go on their adventures and that this is something they do get punished for.

* ''[[The Weekenders]]'', because all the action takes place on...well...the weekend.

** Are there any (no Pokémon training involved) schools?

** There is apparently school for children under ten (though we hear this from Max who is still allowed to follow his sister across two continents, so the trope is still played straight for him), and when you reach your tenth birthday in the Pokémon World, you can become a Pokémon Trainer. People who don't want to be Trainers just continue with normal schooling. There's various fan explanations for this, but however you twist it, that's just how their world works.

* In ''[[Chocotto Sister]]'', Choko's school attendance, or lack thereof, is never mentioned. It possibly is justified by her [[Undead Tax Exemption]], but never onscreen or in the manga.

* Played straight in most ''[[Nancy Drew]]'' book series. Nancy's boyfriend Ned and his friends Burt and Dave are in college, but eighteen-year-old Nancy and her best friends Bess and George are high school graduates who never really even discuss the idea of going to college, or any sort of career plans... except in the short-lived ''Nancy Drew on Campus'' series, in which the college setting was the whole point. This made perfect sense in the earlier books, as in 1930 it would be more unusual for affluent young women to go to university or enter the workforce, but in the current ''Nancy Drew, Girl Detective'' series, which was launched in 2004, it's still never explained why Nancy, George, and Bess aren't enrolled in post-secondary education or planning for some sort of career. Nancy very occasionally takes courses, and she frequently works, whether it's a paid job, an internship, or a volunteer position, but these are always temporary things that last for the plot of one book and are never expected to lead to a degree or a career path.

** And yet her lawyer father hopes to someday rename his firm to "Drew and Daughter".

* As [http://www.tor.com/blogs/2009/03/the-wheel-of-time-re-read-the-dragon-reborn-part-5 this summary] of [[The Wheel of Time]] points out: For all that Elayne, Nynaeve and Egwene are supposedly students at a [[Wizarding School]], they certainly don't have a lot of lessons to attend. This is hand-waved with the explanation that they already know the basics of Channeling and are way ahead of the curve, despite being completely untrained beforehand. In practice, the girls learn or even invent necessary knowledge at uncanny speed, freeing up their schedule to serve the plot and edging them uncomfortably close to [[Mary Sue]] territory.

* The eponymous heroine of ''[[Hannah Montana]]'' goes on tour for weeks at a time, and engages in activities and publicity stunts during school hours, such as reading to a group of preschoolers. Yet, as regular old Miley Stewart, she attends a public school and her absences are never referenced, nor do they arouse the suspicion of anyone at school.

** In the fourth and final season, however, Miley gets to see her best friend Lilly attend a [[California University]] she had been planning to attend all of her life, while Miley is rejected as she hadn't participated in enough school activities because she had to work as Hannah. She only seems to be accepted in after she reveals her secret identity to the whole world.

* For alleged high school students (and later college students), the main characters of ''[[Smallville]]'' spend remarkably little time in class.

* Done quite blatantly in ''[[Kim Possible]]'', where Kim is explicitly shown to skip school to complete a mission, but is rarely called on it since she gets all A's and can still head the Cheerleading Squad (and a thousand other activities.)

** Though she also drags Ron along with her, who's shown to be far less successful.

{{quote|'''Freddie:''' It looks like a mystery to me, and I think that's just a little more important than school.}}

* ''[[Beyblade]]'': Some teams have valid reasons for not going to school, but others... Apparently [[Serious Business|playing with tops]] is a good enough excuse to stay out of school.

* ''[[Digimon]]'' loves this trope, being that it consistently stars characters who are still public school age:

* ''[[Nabari no Ou]]'': Played completely straight in Miharu and Raimei's cases - Miharu in particular misses at least two months of school after {{spoiler|using the Shinrabanshou}}...[[Hands-Off Parenting|and when he comes back home, his grandmother is just happy he's making friends]]. It's averted by Yoite, who never attended school to begin with, and later by Gau when it's mentioned that he ended up dropping out. It's justified in {{spoiler|Kouichi and Shijima}}'s cases because they're not actually kids.

* On the other side, Archaeology class with [[Indiana Jones|Dr. Jones]]. Easy class, or easiest class? Is there a 15-minute rule or do the students just not bother showing up at all?

* Most characters in ''[[Brick]]'' don't even bother with a handwave being that they are criminals/drug dealers though, this is [[Truth in Television]]. The protagonist Brenden though gets an aversion sense he has specifically asked the Vice Principal to try to keep the heat off of him while he unravels a crime.

* ''[[Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide]]'': Sure they're in school, and sure, they go to class when the plot calls for it, but there are many examples where they are some how able to spend the entire day out of school and doing whatever they need to be doing for the topic of the class- and the teachers involved in the plot never mark them as skipping? (One example this troper remembers specifically was the episode where Ned and Moze were dealing with a pair of sneakers in the Lost and Found, Ned wanting them, Moze wanting to return them, and they had the whole day to themselves to deal with the problem, never showing to class once.)

** Amusingly [[Lampshaded|semi-lampshaded]] when there's a dramatic moment in the hall, (hostage exchange, etc. - hey, it's that kind of show) a teacher or hall monitor will walk past, [[Phrase Catcher|ask "Do you have hall passes?"]] and the action pauses while all the students hold up passes, then go right back to the drama.

** Justified in ''[[Power Rangers Samurai]]'', where the Rangers cut ties with their normal lives (with their families' blessing and cooperation) to deal with the threat; it's even mentioned that Mike missed his graduation because of it. The [[Sixth Ranger]], who has no such family support, must have dropped out or graduated himself because he makes a living as a fisherman.

* ''[[Homestuck]]'' plays this very straight. The four 13-year-old [[Kid Hero|kid heroes]] clearly have a wide array of abilities like programming and high-level writing, but there is no mention of any social circles besides the four. School is never mentioned, and Jade and Rose are the only ones with excuses, living on a deserted island and a fairly remote area respectively. On the other hand, [[Apocalypse How|school becomes irrelevant very quickly when the extermination of mankind happens]]. Their parents, as well, seem to have [[Friends Rent Control]] {{spoiler|but actually worked with the [[Ancient Conspiracy]]}}

** Could be justified, and possibly even an aversion, as most of the events that take place on Earth span only a few hours, save for a few scattered conversations.

** {{spoiler|Averted with the Alpha Kids. Jane, Dirk, and Roxy apparently don't go to school out of any real need, Jane being an heiress to a global business empire (though she has obliquely referred to some education in business sense) and Dirk and Roxy living in a post-apocalyptic future in which they are the only remaining humans. The story also takes place on a holiday. And Jake, like Jade, lives on a remote island all on his own, and has done so his entire life.}}

* In the ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]]'' cartoon, quite a few heroes such as Robin, Mas y Menos and Raven should really be in school. A pass could be made for Raven and most of the others, as they have odd powers and would likely not be welcome in schools (Cyborg mentions at one point that he couldn't finish high school because of this). But what about Robin? The kid should really be in school right now.

** May be a case of [[Screw the Rules, I Have Money]] considering who his [[Batman|mentor]] is.