Okay, people.
I was born in October. For the purposes of this discussion, I will say that I was one of the smarter kids in the class.
In my first grade class (which was grouped ENTIRELY RANDOMLY), we had four reading groups. I was in the highest group. (Actually, I knew how to read already, but that doesn’t matter, because since I was a tiny little five year old when school started I MUST have been intimidated by all those big six-year-olds who didn’t know how yet just because they were a few months older than me.) With me in that group, if I remember correctly, were girls born in August, October, December, March, and probably a bunch more equally scattered around the calendar.
Look, intuitively, what you’re saying makes sense. BUT:
– schools don’t typically point out to the other kids which are older and which are younger. No kid is going to be, “Yenty is older than me, so I’ll never be able to read like her!”
– check out reading groups in school, and see if the higher groups REALLY have more older kids. Maybe they do, but I’d be skeptical.
– what you’re really saying is track the kids, so that the “dumber” kids don’t have to be discouraged by the “smarter” kids. I have my issues with tracking, but this is quite frankly the stupidest way to track kids I have ever heard of. Unless the classes are shuffled after a while, considering that if the lower class really has some less intelligent kids than the older one it really will move more slowly, if there are the occasional “smart kids” shoved into that lower class SOLELY because they are on the younger end of the scale, they are now permanently stuck in the “lower” class.
The merits and pitfalls of tracking in general are discussed much more effectively in other forums by more qualified people than I, but this is merely another method, and one a lot more arbitrary. There are plenty of smarter kids born in January and November, just as there are plenty of “dumber” kids born in February and October. By mixing the classes by “developmental level,” you are setting the younger kids- placed in the lower class by a fluke of birth at a permanent disadvantage by putting them in a class that will always move more slowly if the kids are really not at the same level.
Do you always want your kids sheltered and not facing challenges? Do you really only want your kid to see people like him/her? (Oh, right, this is a frum audience. But still.) In life, we need to deal with people of all types and learn in all types of conditions.
I’m too tired to really think of more stuff, but while I think that in theory this is a good idea, and while I think that it may not be so bad to use birth month as a criteria for class placement without giving a thought to the academics, a kid is not doomed to failure for seeing an older or smarter kid doing better than he/she does. And that smarter kid may easily not be older.
Signed, an October baby who did quite well for herself.