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Dr. Baboolal acting President of Trinidad and Tobago opening remarks  click here to read her speech

Dr. Marina Mia Cunin's presentation on the books click here to read her speech

Remarks by Her Excellency Dr. Linda Baboolal, Acting President of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago at the launch of “A Changing Me: The Caribbean Girl’s and Boy’s Body and Self Book” at the La Joya Complex, St. Joseph, Trinidad and Tobago on Saturday, 24th June, 2006.

It is indeed a pleasure to be here and let me first congratulate Dr. Marina Cunin on this book launch. But since she comes from a highly intellectual family – this is no surprise.

I had the opportunity to read and review “A Changing Me” both Girls and Boys copy. I looked at them from the perspectives of a doctor and a parent and found them to be excellent – well written, easily understood and with the biological and medical terms well explained and illustrated so that they will be attractive to the young people.

I felt that these two books have come at an opportune time, as it is becoming more important for children to understand their sexuality and for parents to accept that this knowledge is important for their children’s self esteem and for their protection.

The media is graphic in its lewd and unedifying portrayal of sex and sexuality and children see this all the time as being the norm. Unless taught differently and correctly, they come to accept this behaviour and so can find themselves in difficulty situations unless they have a proper understanding of their bodies, how they function and develop an understanding of what is morally acceptable as well. And also that they learn to respect their bodies and demand that others do so too.

Child pornography, incest, rape of children and sexual exploitation of the young are on the increase even in our little country. We can help our children to resist attempts to lure them into these situations and also, through the knowledge obtained from these books, make them more aware of unseemly approaches, sexual exploitation ad the spectre of sexually transmitted diseases in adult life.

The Minister of Education is taking a new approach to the curriculum and altogether there is a revolution in education. The understanding that knowledge if strength underpins many of the new additions to the curricula and this subject is certainly one.

The Ministry of Health is also producing literature and programmes about drugs, smoking, teen pregnancy and abstinence among others, all in an attempt to use education as the means of explaining these issues of life and for prevention of disaster which can occur due to ignorance of the facts.

Children themselves have a significant role to play and they must be made to understand this. They must be taught the importance of good character. It takes time, it takes patience and it must be developed over the course of many different life situations. Making the right choice in a difficult situation often requires courage. Courage is when you choose to face a difficult situation because it is right to do so, even if it causes you pain. Courage to say “No” to a situation that may appear appealing, but that is potentially harmful. Children must know that it is alright to speak up about any issue that is wrong and to correct the sometimes erroneous information handed down by un-informed adults.

It is indeed a pleasure for me to launch the book “A Changing Me” both the Girl’s and Boy’s copy. I see it as a step in the right direction which is all to the benefit of our young people and ultimately, our country. It is my hope that these books will be put to good use and that it can certainly stir the kind of change that our country needs at this time in the behaviour and development of its youth.

I thank you. May God bless you all and bless our nation.


Speech Notes by Dr. Marina Mia Cunin

First of all, thank you for taking the time to come out this Saturday afternoon for this book launch.

As educators, health professionals, parents and young people, we often tend to think that these are exciting and progressive times for education. Look at what children have access too in their schools today and look at how much information they have… There are developments in new technology specifically targeting education; there is an overall general increase in public funding for education; new teachers joining the service each year infusing their own personal enthusiasm into the profession; numerous new books and materials appearing on the market aimed at increasing the knowledge of our children; yet, year in year out, a significant number of school children, particularly pre-teenagers and teenagers in classrooms all over the world that still declare that “school’s boring”.

Perhaps it is one of the contemporary rites of passage for children and teenagers for that matter, that they must spend a proportion of their early lives continually stating that are feeling bored, whether inside and outside of the school environment. But I also often wonder if the following could be one of the reasons contributing to this boredom: In the necessary debates and discussions from educators and policy makers alike, there is a constant emphasis of ensuring that the education system is kept up-to-date and in line with the changing nature and needs of our society, as well as the needs of the labour market. However in this discourse, the perspectives of the recipients of the education system, the children, the students are often lost, undervalued and under-represented in the process. So when a proportion of children of different backgrounds in different schools in different countries constantly state that they are bored with school, this seemingly global experience is often dismissed as irrelevant rather than given any serious consideration. After all, what do children know?

We write books, we give children information and advice, but often we do so from a top down approach. We tell children to aim high, reach to the top, strive to be the best – as if being down on the lower rungs of the ladder of life is a negative thing. And we wonder why children want to grow up fast and become teenagers and adults, perhaps because they too are aiming high – for being children isn’t where it’s at, it’s powerless place, it’s commands little respect, it’s the place that you aim to leave ..

But I think when adults are writing books for children, we actually do have to ‘come down to their level’ – and we often say that negatively, especially to children - ‘don’t go down to their level’, but in fact it is about getting down to basics and understanding what children themselves have to say about how they would like to receive information.

Remember that today books are in direct competition with computers and television – whether we like it or not, more and more children have been raised with television as their initial teacher.

From children’s perspectives, this television-teacher offers a variety of programmes where they can choose to view what they wish. Increasingly fewer children of middle primary school age are choosing to watching television programmes geared towards general education and knowledge, but prefer to view animated fantasy adventures and programmes which feature children in the main roles and/or story lines.

For those children who have access to computers and/or play video games at home, learning experiences are even more interactive. Children participate as fantasy characters and learn skills of strategy and competition, usually in a solitary setting not a group one.

The content of the television programmes that children are choosing to view, or video games that they frequently play can obviously be questioned in the context of education. There has been much criticism over the past decade concerning such issues as to what children actually learn from these forms of media entertainment and what values are being socialised by them.

However, from the children’s point of view, television, computer and video games appear to be highly enjoyable (if not worryingly addictive); the focus of their learning through TV programmes and computer games that feature them as individuals or centre on their own child experiences; completely consume children’s attention and often children will finish their interactions with comments, such as “Mummy, I ‘learned’ to do x or y today when I was playing on the computer”.

Children have a measure of control over their learning. They can switch off their computer or television-teacher when they no longer wish to ‘learn’ or they can change to a different channel or game where they can learn something new.

Therefore, it could be suggested that children’s ideas concerning contemporary learning are becoming increasingly linked with issues of participation, interaction, control, technology and solitary settings.

Given such out-of-school experiences, children then enter the school arena; which is at first exciting and new for a five year old, but they then have to shift their experience to a situation with one teacher in a classroom who has to share her attention with many children, with one book that they have no control over, where they have to learn in a group setting, where interaction is less because of many students – so this may be a reason why by nine years old after their initial excitement with school, children start to say “school’s boring.”

So we must be mindful of these kinds of issues when we are attempting to write educational books for children.. and it is partly the reason why I can’t take entire credit for these books. You can’t write children’s books and not have children involved in the process.

In these books, it was children who said they liked to see mixed images in a book such as cartoons, next to drawings, next to photographs with people that looked like people they saw everyday, it was children who said that they liked one font of text over another, it was children who said they liked information in small blocks rather than realms of text on one page, and most important, it was children who said that they liked books where they could express their own opinions and experiences, where they could do a number of things such as being asked questions where they could talk with their friends about, where they could write quietly about something on their own in a diary like way or where they could draw or stick pictures in.

Child-centred books to me, are not only where the information considers the child’s perspective as integral to its format, but where children have also been involved in various aspects of the birth of the book – in these books I would say that children were both the advisory committee and editorial committee..

Often in any area of education of children, we adults have a ‘we know best’ attitude and often we do know best – but not when we exclude children’s perspectives - we really know best when we include their perspective, when we have considered it. All children’s books have something to offer, all have good information contained within them, but perhaps the reason why some fail to engage children is simply because children don’t connect with them and if you ask children, you will hear why – valid reasons why – too much information on one page, pictures uninteresting, no place in the book that asks me what I think etc..

The area of Social Studies is the one area that children should feel connected too, they are members of the society of which they are studying, they are studying issues that affect them in their daily lives. It is the one subject in the academic curricula which should consider their life experience as integral and central to the subject – if they study families, then they automatically will use their own family as a reference point, if you write a book which talks about nuclear families and extended families etc.. some children can connect with that. But we all know that there are not only two types of families in our society – and if the material in the book simply stops at these two types of families and does not consider that there are children who are reading that book that come from other family set-ups then the reality is that children are more inclined to disengage from the book – and simply get bored because it does not address their experience. The same can be said when it comes to representations of mixed ethnic heritage families, families of differing faiths..

The Story of… came out of this idea of what it must be like to open a book on your own society and not be represented within it. By children writing their own life and social experiences as the basis for studying social topics – then there is less of a chance for a child to feel excluded. It also allows children to participate in their own learning – in the sense that they are contributing to knowledge rather than simply receiving it.

The book covers all the important social studies topics that are in the curricula as well as  history, geography and cultural topics but they all use children’s experiences as the starting point. Topics also include issues in which children are interested – so not only asking children what their favourite sport is – they also learn about the history of football – many may not have known that 3000 years ago football was played in China and Japan…

The books on puberty in a sense also came from social studies issues. Children’s life experiences outside of the classroom often affect their experience within it and going through puberty is an important stage of their lives and often coincides with an important academic stage of their life, leaving primary school and entering secondary school. Again health education to some extent may be as important an academic subject as maths and physics in that crucial time of their lives.

It is important not to overload children with too much information at this sensitive time of their lives. It is for this reason that sex education issues are not addressed in detail in these books. Children themselves have welcomed a book that they can ‘handle’ in terms of information. It’s about giving them information so that they can gain a certain amount of control over this important time of their life.

Puberty is placed within the context of general body care so that children learn from this important age to accept and respect their bodies as they go through this stage eventually ending at adulthood.

Again ask children what they preferred and they said one book - a general reference book that gave them a lot of different information about their changing physical selves, but one which also addressed issues such as whether chocolate gave them pimples and when or whether to shave their legs or faces – they wanted a book that gave them general information about all health matters concerning their pre-teen lives - a book where they didn’t need to ask their parents or their primary carers about certain things. And this was quite an interesting point because no matter how wonderful a relationship between a parent/carer and child etc.. when it came to puberty and changing bodies and emotions, children seemed to respond well to reading a book, rather than having to talk to adults and ask them questions.

We also consulted parents, health professionals and educators in the research of these books, hence the positive response we have had from these groups to our books.  

Children lead very complicated and complex lives today because of the world that we have created and one in which they to live. They all want to grow up and get big and who can blame them – being a child isn’t easy in every generation when you are constantly reminded that on the basis of being a child, you have little say in your school life, little say in society and little say in the way your body and emotions are going to change during your teenage years.

As adults, it’s nothing new to say that we should participate in children’s general education (in and out of the classroom) by being inclusive and sharing our knowledge, experience and information on a wide range of issues and equally, by listening and giving credit and respect to a child’s perspective on issues. Otherwise, there is little doubt that we will continue to sense a disconnection and disengagement between the world of children and education and the world of children and adults and we will continuously hear that ‘school’s boring’ and ‘I’m bored’ for another generation of children to come.

These books are my adult contribution to the world of children and a way of continuing to connect with other adults, educators, health professionals and parents who really do want children in our society to have well meaning and fulfilling childhoods. There’s nothing like hearing an adult say ‘I really enjoyed my childhood whether I was at school or at home' and I hope in some small way, these books will eventually contribute to that feeling.

Thank you for your listening

08/05/2008

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