August Blues.

Most students have their fair share of struggles in school. I know I do. To each and every student, the factors contributing to whatever struggles they're having in school vary. For example, inter-city kids living in the project-housing areas with a lot of crime, could probably blame it on the dangerous neighborhoods they live in. With the drought still going on in East Africa, kids not doing so well in school in school can definetly blame it on the prolonged damage to their families crops causing them to have nearly no food. (I can hardly imagine school being a first priority when starving). Many students can blame it on a learning deficiency such as Down's Syndrome which comes with difficulty learning, understand, and doing things compared to other children of the same age due to mental retardation, (or as Biology students may as the presence of an extra chromosome 21). Having trouble at home, family struggles, depression, and bullying could also cause a lot of disfocus and trouble in the classroom. So, would it make sense to generalize the idea of children struggling in school and blame it on being born during a certain time of the year?

According to the BBC News Magazine, children born in August struggle more in school and simply don't do as well as children born in the month of September. Students born in August scored substantially lower in national achievement tests and other measures of cognitive skills, and at the age of seven they are more than three times as likely to be regarded as "below average" by their teachers in reading, writing and maths. A 2010 study by the Higher Education Policy Institute found 28% of August-born children went to university compared with 32% of those born in September over a six-year period. This caught my attention because, me, being an August baby myself, never found myself struggling in school until I started to choose more difficult classes in high school. I found it easier to excel in school growing up compared to the way my little brother, who was born in September. I clearly remember my little brother struggling to remember his ABCs and my parents' frustration and confusion because of it, wondering why he didn't grasp learning as easy as I did when starting school. But as the simple saying goes, "Everyone is born different.", and my little brother soon caught on and soon found that his niche in school was reading and literature.

As you can see, the case in my household is totally different. And, as many other August babies may find, this idea of struggling in school because you were born in August, may not apply to them. So, what I am asking here is, is it fair to generalize the idea of struggling in school based on a birth-date, simple statistics, and studies only tested in the UK?

"BBC News - Summer-born Struggle: Why August Children Suffer at School." BBC - Homepage. Web. 31 Dec. 2011. .