Antonina Markowicz
Richard V. Reeves in his article ‘Redshirting the Boys’ presents the idea of delaying starting school for
boys. The term ‘redshirting’ originated, as the author says, from athletics and it represents the idea
of a delayed school start. The author provides the reader with a wide range of arguments and
advantages of such a solution and argues that all boys should be sent to school a year later. In my
opinion, redshirting the boys might be beneficial, but not all of them should be redshirted, and not
implementing such a solution at all also might have its advantages.
The author enumerates a list of arguments in favour of redshirting the boys, focusing mainly on the
fact that boys mature later than girls. That is true, but it omits the important fact that, for example,
boys who were raised with older siblings are more mature than boys raised as only sons. I have
personal experience in advocating this claim. My own brother is now eleven and was raised with two
older sisters (twelve and six years of age difference). In Poland the usual age of starting school is
seven, but as soon as my brother reached the age of six, his kindergarten teacher told my parents
that he should go to school. He was taken to the psychologist to see if he was ready for school. He
passed all the tests and my parents were advised to send him to school as soon as possible. Now, he
is in the fifth grade and is one of the smartest kids in the class and has very good grades. I am also
familiar with more such examples of boys who are brilliant in school and at the same time the
youngest in the class. Mr. Reeves claims very clearly that according to him all boys should be
redshirted, but I think, giving personal experience, that it will not be beneficial to do it as the default.
Moreover, the author says nothing about the benefits of starting school a year earlier, presents no
counterarguments. There are actually studies, like one done by Christian Dustmann and Thomas
Cornelissen, which enumerate the advantages of staring school earlier (especially for boys). In their
study Christian Dustmann and Thomas Cornelissen found out that an earlier school start ‘has positive
effects on language and numeracy skills at ages 5 and 7, and improves a range of non-cognitive skills
up to the end of the observation period at age 11.’ (Cornelissen & Dustmann, 2019). Their study also
deflates Reeves's argument about the fact that boys from lower class families would benefit the most
from redshirting, because in this study the authors proved that such boys benefit from being sent to
school earlier. As they shown, sending those boys earlier blurs the line between them and boys from
upper-class families.
All things considered, I think Richard V. Reeves has a valid point in his article, but the idea of sending
boys to school a year later as a default is not the most shrewd one. As I mentioned before, there are
studies that show the advantages of sending boys earlier to school and especially making the
difference between boys that come from lower-class families and boys from upper-class families less
visible is an enormous asset.
Cornelissen , T., & Dustmann, C. (2019, June 8). CEPR. Retrieved from
https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/benefits-starting-school-early