Boys should start school a year later than girls | Hacker News Reader

Boys should start school a year later than girls

theatlantic.com

34 pointssamizdis36 comments

Here's an interesting quote from the article:

"The cerebellum, for example, plays a role in “emotional, cognitive, and regulatory capacities,” according to Gokcen Akyurek, an expert on executive functioning at Hacettepe University. It reaches full size at the age of 11 for girls, but not until age 15 for boys. Similarly, there are sex differences linked to the timing of puberty in the development of the hippocampus, a part of the brain that contributes to memory and learning."

As the parent of two boys I completely agree, however the burden of childcare and/or one parent not being able to work is huge.

Free childcare for all, and start kids in school when they're ready would be my platform.

*Taxpayer funded childcare for all.

Welcome to Hamburg, Germany. Come on in, it’s nice here.

Should we wait until Spring? I hear it may get pretty cold this winter..

I see no problem with that.

Alternately, reduce taxation so that we're not losing 40+% of income.

Between federal income tax, state income tax, sales tax, property tax, school tax, vehicle registration, tolls, permits and fees we lose a massive part of the money we earn.

If this tax burden was significantly reduced, it would give many families the choice to have a parent stay home and focus on raising the kids.

This sounds like a better outcome than government run childcare.

The families most in need of childcare services are not losing 40%+ of their income.

You might be surprised [1]

[1] https://www.ipi.org/ipi_issues/detail/hidden-taxes-how-much-...

I feel no surprise

> This sounds like a better outcome than government run childcare.

Right, because government-run healthcare works so terribly everywhere else in the developed world. /s

Not only that, haven't studies shown that boys should be educated with boys with predominantly male teachers? It's almost like people had it right the first go around.

The catholic church fully agree with you. Most of the parents, not.

I would guess that the vast, vast, vast majority of boys who have been educated in Catholic schools were not sexually abused. 1% would be an extraordinarily high estimate.

Please don't feed the "male teachers are pedophiles" stereotype.

My son's birthday was _days_ after the deadline to start school "this" or "next" year, and the admin said we could start him the year early since it was so close.

We opted not to, and so thankful that we didn't. He didn't care, and came out of it unscathed; I'm not so sure he would have if we opted for the earlier year.

I was days _before_ the deadline, so I was the youngest in my grade the entire time. It sucked being the smallest for a lot of things, but also I think there are a lot of benefits (assuming you could keep up) in that I graduated high school at barely 17 and basically got to start my career a year before everyone else my age.

Starting school a year later is a huge advantage, since you're physically, emotionally and mentally more mature than your peers. One year at those developmental ages leads to a noticeably stronger and smarter person. Relative to girls, a boy could be much much less mature physically and mentally at the same age, equivalent to multiple years.

But the advantage is only because of relative maturity. If we give everyone this "advantage" the the students will just fall further and further behind as their education gets delayed. In countries with high test scores, students start education earlier and it's more rigorous earlier.

At best, maybe the solution is girls should start school earlier, or maybe we need something more dynamic that looks more individually at each student's development (obviously this has been tried before, but never successfully as far as I know).

Either way, I just don't think the conclusion here follows the facts.

This shows the stupidity of using percentages when dealing with individuals!

What about all the boys who should be skipped ahead?

What about them?

Let's say there are 10 boys in a classroom.

5 of them are very smart, and should be advanced a grade. 5 of them are dumb, and should be held back two grades.

Solution? Each boy should be held back one grade!

The article proposes no such thing.

The argument is more than just grades, it's physical and emotional and social maturity as well.

Besides :) it's a bad math. Smart boys who'd normally were in grade 5, should get into grade 5+1=6. Dumb boys should get into grade 5-2=3. On average, they should get into grade (6+3)/2=4.5, in other words, they should be held back half a grade. Not one grade.

If waiting a year to start school is so great, why not just... send kids to school a year later than we currently do? Or stick in another year of kindergarten?

I haven't read the article, but you seem to have missed that they're making a distinction between boys and girls.

I have, and was making that distinction on purpose. I don't see why we shouldn't hold everyone back a year if it's shown to actually be helpful.

The article talks about this (sending boys to school later than girls). It also talks about why it happens more in some circles than others. The author also discusses a range of reasons for different development pace. Etc.

Really interesting.

That's what the article is arguing for -- delay school start by 1 year for boys, which they call "redshirting." Key argument is towards the end:

> One striking study, by Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach of Northwestern and Elizabeth Cascio of Dartmouth College, drew on data from Tennessee to study the impact of a delayed school start. The children in their sample were allocated randomly into different classrooms. Overall, Schanzenbach and Cascio found that being a year older had a positive impact on eighth-grade test scores, reduced the risks of repeating a grade before high school, and improved the chances of taking the SAT or ACT. The benefits for boys were at least twice as big as for girls on all measures through eighth grade. By high school, only boys were seeing any gains.

> Lastly, they found that the younger classmates of redshirted children suffered no negative consequences. If anything, they wrote, there were modestly positive spillover effects. That’s one reason to believe that girls would only be helped by this shift—having more mature boys in classrooms would likely improve the learning environment.

> Cascio and Schanzenbach’s research is the most robust to date, but their findings have been confirmed by a number of other studies. And related research has shown that redshirted boys are happier, too.

I have seen this done a certain amount, and in at least one case for a girl. Something to do with living in an affluent area, probably.

It's unclear to me if these are helpful markers. I mean, in a vacuum eighth grade stats are nice. But don't we want functioning adults? I was one of the youngest in my class, in hindsight should have skipped a grade, but I will would have probably done better in eighth grade had I waited a year.

It's interesting, I think the takeaway is probably that overall we need to make it easier for people to time shift their grades up or down. Like maybe people should be graduating high school between 16 and 20 more frequently, instead of tightly grouped around 18.

It's very difficult to find good long term studies on the effects of education decisions. Very difficult.

Boys usually need more kinetic activity all day to calm the animal spirits. This is why farm schools for boys were so popular in the past centuries.

“Before the pandemic (which seems to have caused a surge in the practice), about 6 percent of children waited an extra year before beginning kindergarten. But here, too, some children were much more likely to be held back than others: specifically, those with affluent or well-educated parents, and who were white, young for their year, and male.”

Sounds like an equity problem that we can solve by disallowing parents from waiting a year to enroll their boys. It’s the only way to be fair to non-white, non-affluent girls and fight structural racism, classism, and sexism.

You throw out some labels and then push an authoritarian solution. How long have you been a liberal?

I think you might have missed the other commenter’s likely intended sarcasm.

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