Janita Craw / New Zealand's Early Childhood Educator

January 2007 Janita Craw / Pepptalk people

Janita Craw is, amongst other things, a leading light in the world of early childhood and brings to this subject a combination of experience and brilliant intellectual insight. She is the co-curator of several outstanding exhibitions on the subject of early childhood, modern art and culture.

Ms Craw is an outspoken opponent of the punitive New Zealand culture and smacking of children. There is strong evidence that the smacked child becomes the violent adult. Sartre argues that we are so shaped by our past choices and decisions that in the end we check-mate ourselves into an inescapable cubicle of thought and action. And so it is from childhood to adult, a flow of learned behaviour.