Redshirting is when an athlete is held back from competition for a whole year. Redshirting for academic purposes is when a child is postponed entrance to kindergarten for intellectual and physical growth. Redshirting debates have been going on since the term was first used, Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers has recently stirred up the debates. Gladwell’s book discusses the pros and cons of redshirting a child. Gladwell talks about a real-world example in which almost all of the players on the Canadian Hockey League team had birthday’s in the first four months of the year. In canada the cut-off date is January 1, so a child who turns 11 on January 4 would be playing with a child who turns 11 much later in the year. Gladwell concludes that this policy put the two children on very different paths; the older more physically developed ones get put on all-star teams,…show more content… Parents who hold back their kids an extra year in pre-kindergarten do it so their kid will not be the smallest and less developed person in the class. Though these advantages are good, they tend to feed in high school, as Sam Wang puts it, “In high school, redshirted children are less motivated and perform less well” (1). The advantage the kid has in elementary school evens out when they go into high school and become older in life. The cut-off date does not matter and makes little difference in the future. One study done by Hermine H. Marshall suggested that “any perceived advantage to redshirting in the kindergarten year all but disappears by the third grade” (2). In the future everyone will be on an equal playing field competing for jobs and education. Redshirting is an inappropriate action for kindergartens because by the time they grow up everyone will be on an equal playing field, so there is no point for redshirting kindergartners when life becomes equal later
