DuhdCamp Chronicles: Stop Holding My Kid Back, Redshirters!

It’s been a while since I’ve been back, and what better to start off than DuhdCamp whining about his kid being held back. Apparently, it’s all those red-shirtin’ parents who keep holding his child prodigy back. How dare they! Can’t they see that Charlie’s a genius?

You can read the whinefest here.
http://www.babble.com/parenting/all-the-wrong-reasons-to-redshirt-kindergarten/

Check out the comments. DuhdCamp is getting ripped a new one. Aaaand we find out that even though he’s so desperate to send his kid to kindergarten early, Charlie is clearly not ready for it as he still has potty accidents.
Just another middle class douche desperate to fit in with high society. Maybe my brain has been warped by Investigation Discovery, but does this not sound like a lot of family annihilators? It's like he's trying so hard to convince everyone his family is the perfect family.

He thinks that teachers should "diversify" for every kid in the room, to meet each one's individual needs. Yeah...that was pushed down our (teachers') throats awhile back. How do I do that when I am the only teacher in the room, with thirty kids? The answer: I don't, because it's impossible.

Okay so.. I read the article and I still don't know what red shirting means. I'll look it up in a minute. But the biggest thing that struck me here is.. How the bleeding fuck is being held back in a class a "badge of honor" in any light. That means your child is either stupid, or the system fucked them over in some way. How are either of those alternatives an "honor"?

I had to go look up redshirting as well, because the only ones I was familiar with were the Star Trek redshirt and collegiate athletic redshirting.

For anyone else who needs to know what he's talking about -- from wiki "Redshirting is the practice of postponing entrance into kindergarten of age-eligible children in order to allow extra time for socioemotional, intellectual, or physical growth. This occurs most frequently where children's birthdays are so close to the cut-off dates that they are very likely to be among the youngest in their kindergarten class."

According to this definition, I was redshirted. And while I have definite complaints about my scholastic career, going to pre-K for an extra year doesn't even rank on the damn list. If your chyld can't fucking keep up with the rest of the class for whatever reason (and having numerous accidents definitely fucking qualifies Duhddy) then they don't belong in that class. I was an emotional wreck at 4, and they opted to let me mature for another year. If a kyd can't cope then either put them in the sped classes, or hold them back until they are capable of keeping up. It's not rocket science and it's not a conspiracy.

No teacher can "diversify" to teach individually to 30+ kyds. Can't happen. They can't even do it with 15+ (my class size that year). But I'd bet he'd be the first one to throw a hissy fit if someone suggested raising taxes so the school could hire more teachers. Breeders always do. (I do agree that holding a kyd back solely for the athletic advantage is not right, and now I feel dirty for even agreeing with that).

And is this really such a huge problem that requires such hand-wringing? I think DuhddyCamp needs to grow up more than his kyd.

"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live." - Oscar Wilde

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amethyst114
I had to go look up redshirting as well, because the only ones I was familiar with were the Star Trek redshirt and collegiate athletic redshirting.

For anyone else who needs to know what he's talking about -- from wiki "Redshirting is the practice of postponing entrance into kindergarten of age-eligible children in order to allow extra time for socioemotional, intellectual, or physical growth. This occurs most frequently where children's birthdays are so close to the cut-off dates that they are very likely to be among the youngest in their kindergarten class."

Hmm, I was the second-youngest in my class and never had any academic problems. The school proposed that I skip grades twice, but I guess my parents "redshirted" that, because they were concerned about the impact on my social development. (They need not have worried, because nearly all my social problems stemmed from being surrounded by people I had nothing in common with, and I did fine once I got to university.)