It’s 8am and my 16-year-old daughter is having a conversation with her friend, as they prepare to set off for school together.
We’ve just been discussing birthdays – with my daughter trying to outfox her friend by saying that she was a ‘Spring Baby’ when she’d been born in September (it’s true – she was born in Namibia, in the southern hemisphere). I then mentioned that there is a growing body of evidence for the case that summer-born kids are disadvantaged within the current educational set-up in England. And that there are now various campaigns to alter the status quo.
I was genuinely surprised that neither of them had heard about any of this before:
HIM: I can’t believe this is a THING!
HER: I know, right. Look at Yaz and Ed and Oliver in our class. They’re all August born and they’re total, like, freaky geniuses.
HIM: I can’t believe the parents … like they set up entire Facebook pages and forums campaign about this!
HER: I know, right.
HIM: Like, so … your kid is immature and not doing well at school, like, durr, maybe it’s because … they’ve got the sort of parents who set up angry Facebook pages about the month that they happened to have a baby in.
HER: Right.
HIM: Like .. maybe take a good long like at yourself?
HER: Yeah, they’ve only got themselves to blame.
HIM: Yeah!
HER: Cause they should have just had sex earlier on in the year.
HIM: Exactly. Idiots.
Well, I don’t know about you, but after being exposed to this, I’m hoping to goodness that neither of these two are aiming for a future career in the field of education and child development policy…