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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

I have no dog in this fight because my girls have spring birthdays and we never considered redshirting them and they'll generally fall in the middle of the pack one way or the other, but you are complaining that parents who choose to redshirt their child based on what's best for their child should be considering what impact their decision has on children they don't know?  That seems crazy to me.  How is a parent supposed to know what the make up of their child's class will be before they even start school?  How should they know that there will be other children with late summer or early fall birthdays whose parents did not redshirt them and that those children will (purportedly) be negatively impacted by the redshirted child?  I am neither pro nor anti redshirting, but I am pro doing what parents think is best for their child.  To accuse them of being short-sighted because they should have considered the impact on the other students and families, who they don't yet know, is just rude.[/quote]

It's not rude. It's acknowledging that decisions you make for personal reasons nonetheless may have an effect on the public. In fact, Kant's categorical imperative (basically: what if everybody did this?) explicitly addresses the ethics of this kind of decision-making. For example: what if everybody redshirted because they didn't want their children to be among the youngest in the class? Which is pretty obviously different from: what if everybody with a child with a serious illness redshirted their child?

I personally don't care - I was always the youngest by over a year, my older kid is among the oldest in a public school where redshirting is minimal, and my younger kid is the youngest by over a year. I'm just saying that there are actually well-known ethical implications. [/quote]

Um, if everyone redshirted then kindergartners would just be a year older.  So what's your well-known ethical implication here exactly?[/quote]

Well, if all kindergartners were a year older, then everybody would be starting at 6 instead of 5. So that's already something. But then, of course, somebody would still be the youngest, so then if everybody redshirted, then everybody would be starting at 7 instead of 6...

You don't have to agree with Kant, you know. If you want to decide that it's ethical to do something that would have terrible effects if everybody did it, because not everybody is going to do it, that's up to you. The point is that there's been a lot of thought about the public implications of private decisions. It's not a topic that can be dismissed by calling it rude.[/quote]

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