The Cognitive Dissident skipped first grade.
He blamed all his social and academic travails that followed on that (although he no longer blames his parents; they’ve both engaged in serious self-flagellant penitence for years since. Basically they just confused prodigy and prodigal…but what Jewish parent doesn’t?)
As a result of my educational experiences, I have become a big fan of the opposite approach: “academic redshirting”, or holding children back a year at the beginning of school.
Now, according the front page bold-type article in Monday’s New York Sun, “’Lengthening Childhood’ Has Ill Effect: Harvard Study Details Costs of Delaying School.”
Just in time for my birthday—which was Monday—I have my most salient excuse for living pulled out from under me.
Not so fast.
The article details two specific concerns on the part of the researchers: one, that there is more of a chance that public school kids will drop out if they start later, and when they do drop out, it will be with one year less education. Two, starting later means one year less in the workforce, which means one year less salary.
The second concern is easy enough to parry. If redshirting has the effect it is supposed to, the time these kids spend in the workforce should be more productive, e.g. they’ll earn more and be promoted faster, thus canceling out the “lost” year.
The first issue is more complicated to deal with, but I will assert that the effect has less to do with the effect of the redshirting than it does with the way primary and secondary academia are structured. Aside from the obvious issues—the day is too long, the classes are overcrowded, the unions are communo-fascist —one might say the time has come to make the school system more like university education. This means that some kids should have lighter workloads, attend on a part-time basis, spread classes over more years, etc.
Until the system becomes more flexible among the aforementioned lines, the issues described above will persist. Which means the study’s conclusion about redshirting will always be inconclusive at best, and if a parent is weighing factors in whether to redshirt a child, taking this study into account would be of dubious value.
2 comments:
Though I agree with the notion of taking it slow and having students learn how to think as opposed to the rush to memorize every single academic fact under the sun, you fail to mention an obvious problem with early redshirting.
Children need classmates who are emotional peers. If a child is left behind one or two years the emotional impact could be devastating.
Even when kids skip grades, there are many who are illequipped to handle the emotional differences between themselves and their classmates.
In addition kids beings kids often chastise and demean those who are not the same age as their other classmates.
that goes both ways, as i found out. until i stretched out my college years, i was always the youngest or second youngest in my class.
also, you highlight one real issue which has never been addressed in any early education setting: the idee fixe that there is an inexorable link between age, emotional maturity, adn intellectula maturity. somehow the school system has to incorporate a flexibilty toward all three of these things when setting up grades and classes.
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