A warm welcome to you all and thanks for taking time out to come along today.
I want to thank my Principal, Mr.Greg Frohlich for coming up with the idea to hold this event here in our own school hall. Greg and I have worked together for the best part of twenty years and I appreciate his counsel and support.
We first worked together at Yarramalong Public School for four years.
I’m sure he would agree when I say that being a Principal in a two teacher school was a much easier job where there was the Boss and the staff. ….he was the boss and I was the staff.
I have been a teacher in NSW Public Schools for over thirty years as a Primary school teacher of all grades K-6 , a teacher of English to migrant children who had no English, a very brief experience as teacher of illiterate adults, and now a teacher –librarian for the past nine years .
We are here because I written and published this book.
Why may you ask, did I take up the pen, after over 30 years as a teacher, and author such a book this stage of my life and career, why bother?
I can tell you that I wrote this book out of my deep concern for the number of children ( between 20%-25 % of children from English speaking backgrounds) that are now presenting at schools, with a complex variety of speech problems which were previously unknown.
These “problems” ought not be confused with the usual causes of speech impediments, such as hearing problems, congenital speech problems such as Dyspraxia or stuttering. Those problems have always been with us.
The problems I’m referring to include;
- the inability to pronounce words correctly for age,
- a sparse to nonexistent vocabulary
- and the inability to speak in grammatically correct sentences.
At age 5 all children should be able to speak in sentences with a subject, a verb and an object. Such as “Can I please go to the toilet?” not “I go toilet.”
These problems can also be compounded by other difficulties such as poor receptive language where the child’s brain cannot cope with more than one instruction at once.
However, these factors are only part of causes of speech problems in young school aged children… I have found that the causes are multiple, complex and varied.
The research that I have undertaken prior to writing this book, has confirmed that my fears are well founded and widespread.
That’s the reason I wrote this book …to get this message out “there is problem, it’s growing, and there are ways and means for parents, extended families and others to address them prior to a child starting school.
Teachers and those who work in child care and preschools have probably been aware of these developing problems for at least 10 years , most parents are totally unaware that this problem even exists.
Parenting is getting harder and parents today face a tough job.
I suspect many suffer in silence and many lack the support that we of previous generations took for granted, like the extended family network.
How many of you have your extended family close by today?
If you do you are very, very lucky.
I was born in Annandale Sydney in 1950. I lived there until I was aged 5 and in the same street lived all of my aunties, uncles and cousins, two grandparents and one great Aunt and her family.
So as well as my parents there were approximately 11 other members of my extended Family in the same street!
Childcare was a family affair and if I wasn’t at my own house I was with my Nan or my Aunties (there were three of those) and you can bet that if I mispronounced a word or used improper grammar my mother, Nana or one of my aunties would have immediately said “No that’s not what you say … you say this.” So in the past parents had a ready network and the whole family raised the children, not just mum and dad in the suburbs.
I think we all have some inkling towards one of the many causes of poor language skills in the hectic pace of our family life today.
How much time do we spend at work? How much time do we spend travelling to and from work? And when we are at home how much time do we spend just talking to and interacting with our children, babies and toddlers? Babies and toddlers need significant one -on one carer time to develop language skills needed to function at the required level to start school.
What has happened and is still happening in society to cause these problems? And it is a problem in society as teachers do not teach children to speak, parents do that. Parents teach children to speak.
However, as with all problems in life the causes are multiple and come not only from within the family but also from outside the family.….
Technology and how we use and misuse it.
I first came across computers in 1988 at Yarramalong Public school where I was working with Greg.
Green writing on black screens. Simple computer games to drill number facts or play spelling Hangman.
Look where we are now. Computerized classrooms and computers integrated into all levels of education from Kindergarten to Year 6.
However you still have to be able to read to use them properly.
Computers and television can become rampant monsters when their use is unsupervised and unlimited.
I am now hearing horror stories of preschool and primary aged children being put to sleep by a movie on their own TV/DVD player in their bedroom instead of a bedtime story.
Of 15- 18year old boys not leaving their bedrooms, hardly stopping to eat or wash and staying up all night during the week and at weekends to play online computer games. They have become out of control computer addicts, completely unable to be disciplined by their parents.
Life with them must be horrible.
Recently in the school holidays I travelled toSydneyon the train with my granddaughter Sophie’s other Nanna Gina, to take all of our grandchildren to the Zoo.
We were going to meet Sophie and her mum Mel at Circular Quay.
All in all there were three girls between 4 and 9 years of age.
All the way from Gosford to Hawkesbury River station we talked about what we were going to do, what we would see at the Zoo as well as what we could see from the train on the way.
At HawkesburyRivera family of four got into our carriage and sat down opposite us and promptly all pulled out their …….mobile phones to text and DS’s to play games.
For the next twenty minutes not one of them spoke to each other. After another 20minutes one of the boys spotted something interesting outside of the train and tried to attract his mother’s attention.
“Mum….mum…. MUM …look at the…..
“Oh for heaven’s sake Matthew can’t you be quite I’m busy! “
And so they continued all the way to Central station without speaking at all to each other.
In October 2009, I attended a workshop run by the State Library of NSW and conducted at Erina Public Library . It came from Washington State Library in Seattle entitled:” Opening the Doors to Early Literacy “American Children’s librarians Shannon C. Schingl and Dr James Thomas, and children’s entertainer Nancy Stewart conducted separate sessions on the importance of developing early literacy skills in babies and young children. They demonstrated and spoke about how to develop these skills through reading to, talking with, singing to and playing with babies and children and how important these skills were as the first step in being ready for school. I was amazed that they were having the same problems with children’s emerging speech in theUSAas I and many other teachers were beginning to become concerned about here.
At little further investigation revealed that similar problems were developing in theUK. So these problems with children’s speech are happening throughout the entire western world. So why is this happening and where is this situation leading us?
The reasons include those I have already mentioned: lack of extended family support for young parents and families and a growing lack of knowledge amongst their parents of babies and toddlers milestones for normal development.
How many babies did you hold feed and care for before you became a Mum or Dad? In the large families of the past it was common for all of the older children in the family to be given a baby to care for How else did they cope in families of 8-10 children?
Another reason of course is the influence of technology and all of its forms on family life; Television, computers , computer games online and off ,mobile phones ,ipods ,ipads…….need I list more.
How much of your so called relaxation time is now taken up with phone calls and text messages, emails, Face book and Twitter!
In the process of writing this book I also came across some fascinating research at the next level of the educational process of your children………High school.
I found that in 1995 35% of English speaking Australian boys in Yr 9 considered reading a book a totally lame thing to do in your spare time.
The implications to me of this fact (and you can bet your boots that the percentage of English speaking Australian Yr 9 boys has now grown to at least 50%) are that this reading-is-not-cool-and-you-are a-nerd-or a poofta-if-you-do-it attitude could somehow contribute to the continuing drop in Boys performance in the HSC results compared to those boys results of the past.
In 2011 about two-thirds of the “first-in-course” winners were girls.
On the whole Australian male macho sporting culture considers reading a book a complete and total waste of time.
You should see what happens when I meet a man who has left school at 15 and became a successful businessman.
He might be a tradesman or a small business owner but as soon as they find out that I have written a book about the importance of reading in boys’ education they just can’t wait to tell me………
“I’VE NEVER READ A BOOK IN MY LIFE!
Followed closely by “Look how successful I am and I’ve never read a book in my life.”
“Well good on you! Aren’t you lucky! I say “But boy what a small view of the world you must have! Is my usual reply”.
That usually stops them in their tracks.
In a recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald Feb 11 2012 Richard Glover wrote; Books can take you to new worlds, provide solace when you are lonely and allow you to feel the joy and pain of others…….This Tuesday marks the launch of the National Year of Reading, set up by Australian libraries and their friends to tackle illiteracy. The campaign notes that 46 per cent of Australians have difficulty reading newspapers, following a recipe, making sense of timetables or understanding instructions on a medicine bottle.
Literacy matters in all these practical ways but reading and libraries can also be transformative. The library and the bookshop are, if you like, gymnasiums of empathy. And by training our empathy muscles, reading changes the world.
Every reader, I think, will understand how this works in practice. Inside some books –Angela’s Ashes and A Fortunate Life are two popular examples – you can test your own feelings of grief against those of someone who has lived through worse. Inside other books you’ll discover what it is like to be a beggar in Mumbai or a barista inMelbourne.” End quote
A culture of anti –intellectualism in Australia has emerged in the last 30 years alongside the emergence of celebrity culture and hero worship of sporting heroes, film stars and other media personalities.
It wasn’t always so.
My father is a reader who left school at 15 in the 1930’s without a trade or qualification but continued his education through a lifetime of reading.
Science is his particular field of interest. and their isn’t anyone more well versed in the research of Steven Hawkins and new discoveries in Astronomy today that he isn’t aware of …at the age of 88.
My grandfather also a reader who left school aged 12 , to work on the railways. However he could do mental arithmetic in his head faster than anyone using a calculator and he could also recite most of Banjo Paterson’s poems from memory .
The Man from Ironbark and Mulga Bill’s Bicycle were particular favourites .
He also knew Ben Chifley, who was an engine driver at that time, before he became Prime Minister in 1945.
He used to say “ He was always reading. You never saw him without a book in his hand.”
These men were also men who left school early but their self education developed a point of view and knowledge of the world which was extensive because they were readers.
In his article in the Daily Telegraph Tuesday March 6th 2012 David Penberthy wrote about our newly appointed foreign minister Bob Carr.
“Bob Carr is unlike other successful Australian politicians who have affected or traded on a knock-about, everyman style to win votes.
The son of a train driver, raised in working-class southSydney, a product of the state school system, Carr immersed himself in reading from an early age. He loathes the fact that in this nation of ours the adjective “bookish”, the use of which appears to be mandatory in any description of the man, is almost regarded as an insult.
The noun “intellectual” most certainly is. Carr’s reading life, to borrow from the title of his second book, is central to any understanding of the bloke as for him reading was a political act which not only got him out of poverty but helped him become an influencer and a doer.” End quote.
So it comes as no surprise to me that Bob Carr was the instigator of the Premier’s Reading Challenge in 2001.
This Year 2012 is the National Year of Reading.
My hope is that in this National year of Reading my little book will contribute to the ongoing discussion on the importance of speech and language in the preparation of babies and children for learning, so all children can maximise their opportunities and reap the benefits of a good education . Thank you
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