One recent day, Erika jumped up from reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell saying we should have held back Connor from first grade, quoting something from the Bible, and going on about how he will not be able to make up the disadvantage. Had we irrevocably injured Connor’s chances of success by sending him to first grade too soon?

What is Redshirting?

Redshirt comes from collegiate sports and means a student who postpones playing on a team for a year.  When referring to children, it means holding a kindergarten or first grade-eligible child back one year so the child can mature.

Why do parents redshirt a child? There are two main reasons. The first reason is for a child who hasn’t matured enough academically, physically and/or socially to enter kindergarten or first grade.

Redshirting as a Performance Enhancer for Kids

The second and more common reason for redshirting these days, is for parents using it as a performance enhancer. By holding a child back, parents reason that next year, the child will be one of the older kids in the class, will then perform better, and will also develop more confidence. This rationale is used more on boys though I myself do not understand why it’s more applicable to boys than girls (I understand girls mature faster but if you believe this to be a performance enhancer why not do it for girls too).

What is the Matthew Effect?

The Matthew Effect is a sociological term first coined in the 1960s but made popular in 2008 by Malcolm Gladwell who devotes Chapter 1 of Outliers to it. It refers to the phenomenon where success breeds more success while failure breeds more failure. In other words, those who are more successful acquire more attention, resources, etc. to become even more successful. The Matthew Effect is named after a New Testament Bible verse that basically says the same thing but in more eloquent Bible-speak (I won’t quote it since everybody else quotes it).

Prior to the publication of Outliers, a New York Times best-seller, redshirting was more of an urban myth. Many online discussions predating Outliers are arguments back and forth about whether it really helps or not. There’s even frequent mention of a June, 2008 research paper titled “The Lengthening of Childhood” that links redshirting to “stagnation in the high school and college completion rates of young people”. It’s easy to see, however, that this study focuses more on the first reason for redshirting, i.e. when kids really need to be held back, and can explain why there’s a correlation between redshirting and higher dropout rates.

By popularizing the Matthew Effect, Malcolm Gladwell has given redshirting legitimacy as a performance enhancer since it provides a theoretical basis for the practice. In the book, Gladwell provides convincing evidence of the Matthew Effect at work in the Canadian junior hockey league. BUT he simply applies the effects to schooling without any specific proof that the Matthew Effect is at work in schools.

I’m not saying he’s wrong, but there are clear differences between sports where playing time is very limited and the goal is winning, and education where children spend much of a day and the goal is mastery.

What About Connor?

In California, the age cutoff is in December and Connor’s birthday falls just before that. We decided to send him to first grade even though he would be one of the youngest in his class because he was academically ready and we didn’t want him to be bored. He was already ahead in reading and math at the beginning of first grade. But mostly, it was because I myself was always the youngest in my class and I turned out pretty well, I think Still, it was a hard decision. Though he was academically ready, he was physically the smallest in his class. Socially, he was ok but shy and a follower compared to the rest of his class.

Could he do better if we had redshirted him? Would he be GATE-qualified? Would he be more confident and more of a leader?

More Research Needed

This is such an important topic, I hope someone reading this will be motivated to conduct scientific research on whether redshirting really is a performance enhancer for children who don’t need to be redshirted. So far, I have not found any existing research about this topic. I wish I could recommend to parents one way or another, but lacking any firm evidence, redshirting still must be a judgment call. Good luck with your decision.