Mpiyakhe you are soooooo on the money! it is so important that we have these discussions in the "modern" discourse. Good on you for putting it out there 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Things like a work ethic and values and critical thinking are taught / caught much more at home than in the world... except when they are not taught at home, then the world becomes the instructor and is why I think there is so much problem thinking out there.
There is no doubt that the greatest form of intergenerational wealth is education in the broadest sense. That is why some of the wealthiest parents (or grandparents) are willing to pay R100,000s per child for a year of top schooling. And the role of caregivers in nurturing the child cannot be over-stressed.
Sadly, while the writer imposes HIS ideological views on abortion (which is legal in this country and prevents 22% of children (his statistics) being born to raped mothers or other unwanting homes, adding to the problem.
He also skips the other, real pre-birth challenges a child faces. Apart from foetal alcohol and other pregnancy hazards, many birth defects can be avoided by pre-natal, even pre-conception (e.g. spinal bifida) care.
Sadly, after pre 1994 Apartheid and post 1994 Corruptheid, there are many children with dysfunctional homes. While good schooling cannot fully compensate, it can ameliorate the child's growing conditions and offer some relief.
Calls like Mr Dhlamini's are likely to fall on deaf ears; fixing education *is* something society can undertake.
Thank you for this, the other pre-birth challenges I did not touch on are the ones I am not familiar with. That does not mean they are not important, I simply wrote about the challenges I am most familiar with.
I have to disagree with you on abortion, as anyone who reads the rational standard regularly like I do knows, legality is no indication of morality. Abortion is murder, this is a fact by any objective definition of murder. Of course sometimes they'll be a devastating choice between a mother's life and that of the baby, in such cases the mother is best placed to decide or her family if she is unable to decide, but note, only the protection of life can make the ending of another life acceptable (same principle applies to self-defence).
I have read the argument from the book freakonomics on how abortion lowered crime rates, my response is that we can take crime to 0% by killing every human. We just cannot take such an instrumentalist approach to human beings, we believe in the right to life of every human being not because every human life leads to good outcomes, but because it is human.
The law must have a non-arbitrary standard for the beginning of human life, we cannot rely on scientific theories which may be overturned tomorrow. The only non-arbitrary standard for the beginning of human life is at conception. If scientists "discover" that we only become humans 6 months after birth, would we legalise the murder of babies under 6 months when raising them is inconvenient?
We cannot be a society that does not respect human life and expect human life to have good outcomes in our society, human beings just don't work like that. If our laws signal that human life is not important, then people will act accordingly.
Yes, education is important but like I said in the article, it is not a cure-all, there are still large differences in outcomes between children in the same class, between those who come from loving homes and were raised by two parents, and those who did not have this.
Mpiyakhe you are soooooo on the money! it is so important that we have these discussions in the "modern" discourse. Good on you for putting it out there 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Things like a work ethic and values and critical thinking are taught / caught much more at home than in the world... except when they are not taught at home, then the world becomes the instructor and is why I think there is so much problem thinking out there.
Thank you!
There is no doubt that the greatest form of intergenerational wealth is education in the broadest sense. That is why some of the wealthiest parents (or grandparents) are willing to pay R100,000s per child for a year of top schooling. And the role of caregivers in nurturing the child cannot be over-stressed.
Sadly, while the writer imposes HIS ideological views on abortion (which is legal in this country and prevents 22% of children (his statistics) being born to raped mothers or other unwanting homes, adding to the problem.
He also skips the other, real pre-birth challenges a child faces. Apart from foetal alcohol and other pregnancy hazards, many birth defects can be avoided by pre-natal, even pre-conception (e.g. spinal bifida) care.
Sadly, after pre 1994 Apartheid and post 1994 Corruptheid, there are many children with dysfunctional homes. While good schooling cannot fully compensate, it can ameliorate the child's growing conditions and offer some relief.
Calls like Mr Dhlamini's are likely to fall on deaf ears; fixing education *is* something society can undertake.
Thank you for this, the other pre-birth challenges I did not touch on are the ones I am not familiar with. That does not mean they are not important, I simply wrote about the challenges I am most familiar with.
I have to disagree with you on abortion, as anyone who reads the rational standard regularly like I do knows, legality is no indication of morality. Abortion is murder, this is a fact by any objective definition of murder. Of course sometimes they'll be a devastating choice between a mother's life and that of the baby, in such cases the mother is best placed to decide or her family if she is unable to decide, but note, only the protection of life can make the ending of another life acceptable (same principle applies to self-defence).
I have read the argument from the book freakonomics on how abortion lowered crime rates, my response is that we can take crime to 0% by killing every human. We just cannot take such an instrumentalist approach to human beings, we believe in the right to life of every human being not because every human life leads to good outcomes, but because it is human.
The law must have a non-arbitrary standard for the beginning of human life, we cannot rely on scientific theories which may be overturned tomorrow. The only non-arbitrary standard for the beginning of human life is at conception. If scientists "discover" that we only become humans 6 months after birth, would we legalise the murder of babies under 6 months when raising them is inconvenient?
We cannot be a society that does not respect human life and expect human life to have good outcomes in our society, human beings just don't work like that. If our laws signal that human life is not important, then people will act accordingly.
Yes, education is important but like I said in the article, it is not a cure-all, there are still large differences in outcomes between children in the same class, between those who come from loving homes and were raised by two parents, and those who did not have this.