Who did I raise?
What makes a criminal? Taking a look at a child's formative years could provide the answer to many questions.
Following on from the current murder cases that have taken over the whole of Krugersdorp, everyone is trying to think of a reason for what happened, and what could have been done to prevent it.
Instead of doing an in-depth analysis of why these crimes were committed, the News would like to take it back a step further – to the beginning. Every human being is born an innocent child, so what happened to change this?
According to Roxanne Wienand, Sponsorship and Communications Manager for Preschools 4 Africa/Play-With-A-Purpose Educational Trust, 80 per cent of a child’s brain is developed by the age of five. This makes those first five years a critical period, in which morals, values and beliefs are formed and ingrained in a child’s thinking.
She adds that the International Journal of Child and Youth Care, which features an article written by the founder of the trust, Robyn Wienand, explains that children who don’t get the correct stimulation and behaviour management in the first five years of their lives have a greater chance of being arrested for a crime – and not only in South Africa but abroad too.
Further research in Chicago’s Child Parent Centres and the Perry Preschool Programme support this notion and have found that children who do not have access to preschool education are 70 per cent more likely to be arrested for a violent crime.
As published in the article entitled Crime and public violence: a dual threat in South Africa which was featured on the News’ website last week, the average number of murders in South Africa is 32,9 per 100 000 people, while the average in Gauteng is 28,4 per 100 000. If you compare that to the international average of 6,2 per 100 000, you can see that South Africa has a problem.
Nelson Mandela perfectly summed up how much a child’s early development means for this country by saying, “Our children are the rock on which our future will be built, our greatest asset as a nation. They will be the leaders of our country, the creators of our national wealth who care for and protect our people”.
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