Elijah Jackson
10/24/21
English 1021-116
Kindergarten Redshirting
1st speaker – Morley Safer introduces the topic of parents “redshirting” their 5-year-old kids to give them
an advantage in kindergarten. He says parents hold back their 5-year-old child until they are 6 then send
them to kindergarten. Parents who don’t redshirt their child are worried that their child will be a failure
having to compete against older children.
2nd speaker – Megan is the mother of Barrett and redshirts him because he has a summer birthday. She
say she wanted to give him an extra year to grow and mature. She says this gives him an advantage and
allows him to become a leader in his class. She says she doesn’t think of it as cheating because she
wants to give her child as much an advantage in life as she can.
3rd speaker – Holly is the mother of Holden and she had never heard of redshirting until moving to
Dallas, so her son started kindergarten shortly after turning 5. She was shocked when his teacher told
her she should hold him back until he was 6. Holly told the teacher that Holden could read and that he
no behavioral issues. But the teacher told her he would be the youngest in the class.
4th speaker – Malcolm Gladwell, the author of “Outliers”, talks about the concept of cumulative
advantage in his book. The idea of it is that extra help when kids are young will give them a slightly
better position in their life. An example he used was junior all-stars in hockey and how majority of them
were born in the first part of the year. He also says this can be seen in the pro league also, because the
advantage never dissipates. He says kids born closer to cut off dates have an advantage academically as
well as compared to those born after.
5th speaker – Elizabeth Duey says because older kids appear more able, they get put into higher forms of
education which allows them to be ahead of their younger classmates. Her data also shows that older
kids attend college more often. She also says her data shows her that older kids have a higher chance of
becoming a leader in high school. She says if she had a 5-year-old child that was the youngest she would
also hold her child back.
6th speaker – Samuel Mysels says before parents would want their child to skip grades but now they
want to hold them back a grade. He thinks that any advantage a child would have would decrease as
they get older and that kids develop at different rates. He also shows studies that kids who were
redshirted have increased behavioral problems because classes are easy for them. He also says the
practice of redshirting kindergarteners is unequitable. He says kids should have a leveled plane field.
7th speaker – Heather mother of Jacob tried to hold him back but the Chicago public school system didn’t
let her. She says she was prepared to move over the issue. But she eventually enrolled Jacob into private
school where he could start kindergarten at 6. She says she think if he didn’t get redshirted then he
would be okay in his early years but later he wouldn’t be okay socially.
