Canadian Malcolm Gladwell in his book, "Outliers," tells us that the way Canadians select hockey players is a beautiful example of what the sociologist Robert Merton famously called a "self-fulling prophecy" --- a situation where a "false definition, in the beginning....evokes a new behavior which makes the original false conception come true."
Canadians start with a false definition of who the best nine and ten-year-old hockey players are. They're just picking the oldest every year. But the way they treat those "all-stars" ends up making their original false judgment look correct.
As Merton puts it: "This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning."
If you make a decision about who is good and who is not at an early age; if you separate the "talented" from the "untalented"; and if you provide the "talented" with a superior experience, then you're going to end up giving a huge advantage to that small group of people born closest to the age cutoff date.
Note: In Canada, the eligibility cutoff for age-class hockey is January 1. A boy who turns ten on January 2, then, could be playing alongside someone who doesn't turn ten until the end of the year---and at that age, in preadolescence, a twelve-month gap in age represents an enormous difference in physical maturity.
In the U.S., the cutoff date for almost all nonschool baseball leagues is July 31, with the result that more major league players are born in August than in any other month. The numbers are striking: in 2005, among Americans playing major league baseball 505 were born in August versus 313 born in July.
It seems ridiculous that this arbitrary choice of cutoff dates is causing long-lasting effects, and no one seems to care about them. In Canadian children's hockey, it's the biggest nine and ten-year-olds who get the most coaching and practice. Success is the result of what sociologists like to call "accumulative advantage." The professional hockey player starts out a little bit better than his peers. And that little difference leads to an opportunity that makes that difference a bit larger, and that edge in turn leads to another opportunity, which makes the initially small difference bigger still--and on and on until the hockey player becomes a genuine standout.
If Canadian hockey and U.S. baseball children leagues acknowledge that cutoff dates matter, they could set up leagues divided up by month of birth....letting players develop on separate tracks and then pick all-star teams. With all child athletes having a fair chance, then national teams suddenly would have twice as many athletes to choose from.
Malcolm Gladwell: Outliers: The Story of Success
