Kindergarten cohorts
Really, I hope I'm around in 20 years to read some of the dissertations that will have titles like, "Always Anxious: Media Attitudes towards Parenting Practices and the Transmission of Class Status Among American Elites in the Early Twenty-First Century." There are gonna be a hell of a lot of New York Times articles cited in those dissertations. I'm just saying.
So let's talk about what age children should be when they start kindergarten. I know there are several of you out there who have just concluded the long march through kindergarten along with us. Do you wish you had "redshirted" your kids? How has kindergarten treated you?
Y'all know that LG, with a summer birthday, is one of the youngest kids in his class. Should I be as anxious about his future prospects as this article suggests? I dunno. He's been pretty happy in kindergarten. We haven't gotten his final report card yet, but over these nine months he's progressed from not reading at all to reading above his grade level. His math skills are now more than adequate, too. Is that enough to guarantee a lifetime of success? Well. Probably not. I don't think he's at the top of his class academically. Maybe he would have been at the top if we had kept him back a year. Have we destroyed his chances of attending a Fancy Pants University by sending him to kindergarten as a five year old rather than as a six year old?*
There are ways in which he lags a little bit behind his classmates, possibly because of his relative youth. His handwriting is pretty poor compared to most of the other kids in his class, and his drawing skills are less advanced. He's smaller than almost everyone in his class, of course, but that probably would have been the case even if we had kept him back -- most of next year's incoming kindergarteners are taller than he is, too. As Mr. Blue observed, chances are he's going to be short compared to his peers for his whole life; he might as well learn to live with it sooner rather than later. He probably would have had an easier time keeping up with his classmates physically if we had kept him back a year, though -- he just can't run as fast or jump as high as they can. But I don't think that's been a major issue for him in terms of getting along with his peers. To the extent that he has shied away from some of the boys in his class, it seems to have more to do with their interest in aggressive play and their propensity for telling scary stories. LG doesn't share those interests, and probably wouldn't even if he had started a year later. Either way, I don't see him particularly struggling to cope with his peers, and his teacher has described him as "a good friend to everyone in his class." So it seems like we're doing OK on that score.
But the article does go quite a ways in prodding me to second-guess our decision to send him to kindergarten. There's research cited that shows that the lag effects for the youngest children in their cohort persist at least through junior high, and probably into adulthood.** It's hard not to do a little second-guessing upon reading that. Which is probably the point. While the author does a pretty good job -- as these things go -- of discussing the ways in which the redshirt debate has far more significant impact on the kids who don't come already equipped with LG's socioeconomic advantages, the lens of the article is ultimately that of relatively wealthy parents and their concerns about the effects of relative age on their children's success. The real social issue here is how the practice of redshirting may serve to reinforce already existing inequalities. But, as always, the hook is, "Are you, Mr. and Mrs. Six Figures, about to make fatal parenting errors? You bet you are. And you've got no one to blame but yourself if you don't avoid them by reading this article."
I sure as hell hope that we didn't make fatal parenting errors. I do wonder a little bit, though, of what the ramifications of redshirting will be on the other end of a child's education. In an economy in which a graduate degree is a requirement for an increasing percentage of professions, a kid who doesn't finish undergraduate studies until he or she is 23 or 24 may end up sacrificing more prime earning years to education than a kid who finishes at 21 or 22. Those couple of years may also affect reproductive decisions. Or not. Maybe a year or two one way or the other won't make any difference. But I wonder if those older kids will feel like they have had less time to experiment and make false starts, less time to think about what roads they want to travel, than their younger peers. I had a lot of floating that I needed to do when I finished college, and I'm grateful that I was able to start it at 21 rather than 23. But maybe these older kids will be more focused and less in need of time to experiment. Well. It should make for some more fascinating dissertations in 20 or 30 years. Even if it makes for some more anxious parenting now.
------------------------
*The question of whether or not going to a Fancy Pants University is a make-or-break measure of adult success is beyond the scope of this post. Though you can probably guess what I think about it.
**One assumes that the study controlled for other demographic advantages likely to accrue disproportionately to relatively older children in the cohort, given that redshirting rates are far higher among wealthier communities than among low-income communities.
So let's talk about what age children should be when they start kindergarten. I know there are several of you out there who have just concluded the long march through kindergarten along with us. Do you wish you had "redshirted" your kids? How has kindergarten treated you?
Y'all know that LG, with a summer birthday, is one of the youngest kids in his class. Should I be as anxious about his future prospects as this article suggests? I dunno. He's been pretty happy in kindergarten. We haven't gotten his final report card yet, but over these nine months he's progressed from not reading at all to reading above his grade level. His math skills are now more than adequate, too. Is that enough to guarantee a lifetime of success? Well. Probably not. I don't think he's at the top of his class academically. Maybe he would have been at the top if we had kept him back a year. Have we destroyed his chances of attending a Fancy Pants University by sending him to kindergarten as a five year old rather than as a six year old?*
There are ways in which he lags a little bit behind his classmates, possibly because of his relative youth. His handwriting is pretty poor compared to most of the other kids in his class, and his drawing skills are less advanced. He's smaller than almost everyone in his class, of course, but that probably would have been the case even if we had kept him back -- most of next year's incoming kindergarteners are taller than he is, too. As Mr. Blue observed, chances are he's going to be short compared to his peers for his whole life; he might as well learn to live with it sooner rather than later. He probably would have had an easier time keeping up with his classmates physically if we had kept him back a year, though -- he just can't run as fast or jump as high as they can. But I don't think that's been a major issue for him in terms of getting along with his peers. To the extent that he has shied away from some of the boys in his class, it seems to have more to do with their interest in aggressive play and their propensity for telling scary stories. LG doesn't share those interests, and probably wouldn't even if he had started a year later. Either way, I don't see him particularly struggling to cope with his peers, and his teacher has described him as "a good friend to everyone in his class." So it seems like we're doing OK on that score.
But the article does go quite a ways in prodding me to second-guess our decision to send him to kindergarten. There's research cited that shows that the lag effects for the youngest children in their cohort persist at least through junior high, and probably into adulthood.** It's hard not to do a little second-guessing upon reading that. Which is probably the point. While the author does a pretty good job -- as these things go -- of discussing the ways in which the redshirt debate has far more significant impact on the kids who don't come already equipped with LG's socioeconomic advantages, the lens of the article is ultimately that of relatively wealthy parents and their concerns about the effects of relative age on their children's success. The real social issue here is how the practice of redshirting may serve to reinforce already existing inequalities. But, as always, the hook is, "Are you, Mr. and Mrs. Six Figures, about to make fatal parenting errors? You bet you are. And you've got no one to blame but yourself if you don't avoid them by reading this article."
I sure as hell hope that we didn't make fatal parenting errors. I do wonder a little bit, though, of what the ramifications of redshirting will be on the other end of a child's education. In an economy in which a graduate degree is a requirement for an increasing percentage of professions, a kid who doesn't finish undergraduate studies until he or she is 23 or 24 may end up sacrificing more prime earning years to education than a kid who finishes at 21 or 22. Those couple of years may also affect reproductive decisions. Or not. Maybe a year or two one way or the other won't make any difference. But I wonder if those older kids will feel like they have had less time to experiment and make false starts, less time to think about what roads they want to travel, than their younger peers. I had a lot of floating that I needed to do when I finished college, and I'm grateful that I was able to start it at 21 rather than 23. But maybe these older kids will be more focused and less in need of time to experiment. Well. It should make for some more fascinating dissertations in 20 or 30 years. Even if it makes for some more anxious parenting now.
------------------------
*The question of whether or not going to a Fancy Pants University is a make-or-break measure of adult success is beyond the scope of this post. Though you can probably guess what I think about it.
**One assumes that the study controlled for other demographic advantages likely to accrue disproportionately to relatively older children in the cohort, given that redshirting rates are far higher among wealthier communities than among low-income communities.
posted by Phantom Scribbler at 8:18 PM 
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