Advertisement

We need your help now

Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.

You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.

If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.

Living

What did you learn in preschool today, kids?

Children who get early education ‘less likely to lie, cheat or steal as adults’.

AN EDUCATION EXPERT has said that attending a preschool bolsters a child’s sense of ethics right into adulthood.

Dr Larry Schweinhart told the youngballymun conference in Ballymun, Dublin yesterday that research has discovered that children who have been sent into early education have stronger moral values and are less like to commit steal, lie or cheat as adults than whose who don’t go to preschool.

His research on a long-term study of preschoolers in the United States has tracked down children who grew up in disadvantaged social areas in the 1960s but were given preschooling. Dr Schweinhart, the Irish Times reports today, said it was clear that this extra education set children up for life, helping with their cognitive development and helping them to achieve higher standards of ethical behaviour.

He criticised any potential cutbacks to preschool funding as short-sighted. He said:

We are so focused on looking at the cost, we don’t look at the benefits until the lack of a benefit comes and bites us like crazy.