Redshirting your 5-year-old solely for the purpose of giving them an advantage in sports, a leg up in the future popularity contest, or just to save them from the horrible fate of being the "youngest" in their class (and the last to have a driver's license) drives me NUTZ!
(Remember my rant last fall - Redshirting . . . What about tomorrow?)
Well last night I caught 60 Minutes' rebroadcast of Redshirting - Holding kids back from kindergarten, which I had missed back in March, and I was, once again, all in a huff.
This piece of journalism, as have many others (in both print & broadcast) focused solely on the superficial and relatively transient perceived benefits of holding your 5-year-old back, while Mr. Safer & team failed to explore any of the real developmental reasons some children really do need to put off kindergarten for a year and how that extra time may benefit them in the short and long term.
Mr. Safer also failed to examine the long-term effects of redshirting on children as the proceed thru their academic life. I sure hope somebody is out there studying these old, bigger, more mature students as they progress thru their school years?
And as a parent of two "youngest in the class", I wonder if these redshirt parents' choice will be subjecting other children, who's parents followed the rules, to a school life of struggling to keep up with classmates that should actually be in another class?
Redshirting - does it really buy your child a long-term advantage in school and in life?
I saw the piece on 60 minutes for the second time last night and I am very glad that there was no such thing as red shirting when Ashley started school. I am also glad that cities like Chicago have set dates as to when your child should enter school based on their date of birth. What is this world coming too?
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