August-Birthday-Boy-Ism

Jender has an interesting post at "Feminist Philosophers" on a case of a prejudice I'd never heard of, the idea that, because August children take a bit of a hit on testing, at least in English state schools, they will "do less well academically" and that we should "not expect too much" from them.

I found this quote from that article interesting:

John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of Schools and College Leaders, said: "You don't do your children any favours by having them in July or August."

Which is an odd way of putting it, since it suggests something like, "Parents, due to entirely arbitrary features of our school system, summer children are put at a completely unnecessary disadvantages; you should stop having summer children." I doubt that was precisely what Dunford meant, and possibly he was simply misunderstood by the reporter; but that's what the words suggests.

In any case, I found it an interesting case (as Jender suggests it is) of accumulating penalties on fairly trivial grounds due to biases; particularly as I'm an August boy myself.