In the US, one in 11 kindergarteners have been held back a year compared with when they should have begun school. In today's New York Times, Sandra and I have an article on this practice, called redshirting, and the fact that it brings very little lasting benefit for a child.
If you are interested in our literature sources, an annotated version can be found here (Word document) and here (PDF).
Sunday, September 25, 2011
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3 comments:
I just read your NTY article 'Delay kindergarten at your child's peril'. Great article; we are always trying to deliver the message: 'Delay learning at your child's peril', as we are greatly perplexed by the degree which we fail to challenge our kids in the early years. Your contributions are most welcome. We'd love you to do a guest blog post about your book or thoughts on early education (www.k5learning.com/blog). Regards
I read this and just had to comment... we went through this with our kids, but so did my mom. I'm 45 with a birthday in a few days; I started Kindergarten when I was a month away from turning 5. The trouble started the first day -- apparently I shocked the teacher by reading what she had written on the blackboard. I spent another month, watching the other kids learn their letters, while I struggled with scissors.
In the end, I was pulled out of kindergarten and sent back to nursery school for another year. I started first grade on schedule the next fall, at age 5, soon to be 6.
I'm now a reasonably successful engineer, with a masters degree, working for a semiconductor manufacturer, with a wife of 22 years and 3 kids. However, with the issues I had with social and physical maturity, my mom is still convinced she should have held me back a year.
This is a point of frustration for me. Two of my children were born days after the kindergarten cut off for our state and the schools are completely inflexible. In preschool programs, both were placed with the older children, but in public school they were placed in classes in which they are always the oldest for their level. To some extent this has been mitigated by the fact that it is a mixed age Montessori environment, but they have frequently been held back from things simply because of those couple of days difference. One of the children was born a week and a half past her due date making her in a technical sense much older than a number of children in the next grade level up. And it also cost thousands of dollars in childcare to pay for an extra year.
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