 Thank you very much for coming and thank you very much, Shari, for having me. Yes, I'm a children's author and also a publisher. I've published all of my books and I've learnt an awful lot about obviously publishing books, but I've also, because I spend a lot of my time in schools and because I run a regular writing competition on my blog, I'm absolutely passionate about children's literacy and I'm very worried of what's happening with children's literacy and I think we probably all are. And so I want to talk about it today, but before I do, I'd quite like to know why you're here and what you hope to get out of this particular talk because I don't want to be going over stuff you already know, and I also want it to be a bit of a dialogue as well. So if you've got something to say about what I'm saying or if you've got your own suggestions, please speak up and we can all benefit from each other's experience because I know I've got a lot of academics here. So of course I'm feeling terribly nervous because I'm not an academic. I do have a law degree and I did practice as a lawyer for a long time, but I have never lectured in academia. So, you know, please get involved. Okay, I was just wondering, I mean, are you here because of your own kids or because you are teaching kids or you're teaching older students or why is it that you're particularly interested in this talk? Does anyone want to, sorry? I want to hear from them on books. I may be preaching to the converted with you. I do this talk a lot in schools and I do it for parents and one of the things that really upsets me is I'm always preaching to the converted because if a parent doesn't care that their child is illiterate, they're not going to come along. And what I feel like doing is setting up camp outside the gate of the school and just dragging them all in with a fishing net and say, you've really got to understand what a lack of literacy is going to do for your child in the future and what kind of a society we are building with children who are increasingly becoming less and less literate. And we all know what the bogeymen are and I'll be talking quite a bit about the bogeymen as we go through the talk. Okay, hang on. I'm just going to use this little arrow forward. These are my books. The only one for sale outside is the Tale of Rodney Ram and better be quick because there's only two copies. But you've all got bookmarks and I just wanted to let you know when you try to get all my books I've got a very good deal if you get the whole set on my online website which is on your bookmark. Okay, so first the bad news. I go into schools and I give my talk about how to write a riveting story. It's a workshop. And in this workshop I say to these little kids and they are anything between 8 and 12 years old. And I'll say to them, righto. Now we're going to look at the genre and we're going to look to say adventure. Why don't you describe for me, I say now in adventures we're involving a physical challenge. Can someone give me a description of a main character? This is going to be the good guy or the good girl. Can you give me a description using adjectives? And the kids say, like Spider-Man. And I'll say, like Spider-Man. And they say, yeah, like Spider-Man. Well, we're not going to have any characters from popular fiction here. I want you to create someone for yourself. Give me some adjectives. They absolutely look at me blankly. They don't know what to say. Now this is becoming a more and more common phenomenon. Kids are becoming less articulate every day. There's a particular school that I go to which is so keen on books and I love this school. They actually have book balconies right around the school. And the headmistress really believes in music and books. So if you've got a sportsman on your hands, you don't send them to this particular school. Now at this school, I talk to the grade fives and I give them my lecture. And the teacher came up to me this year because I go in every year to do the grade fives. And they said, you know what you're saying, because I go, this talk to the teachers is exactly right. This is what we're seeing. And this is what we are seeing an epidemic of right throughout English language schools. And I'm not just talking about here in Hong Kong. I'm talking about in Australia, I'm ashamed to say, where literacy is appalling at the moment. And this is happening in the States and the UK as well. And this is basically kids with poor vocabulary, unable to construct a sentence properly, non-existent grammar, little story structure, few original ideas, poor general knowledge. And this is the real crunch. I've gone into extremely posh schools in Melbourne where money is no object. And the librarian will proudly show me the books that the children are producing. And I look at these books and digitally they're superb. I mean, they've got the bills and whistles. They look absolutely fantastic. They look highly professional. And then I start reading the story and it's embarrassing. And I don't know what to say to the librarian because the kids cannot write. So this is a problem. And this obviously. And is this the experience that you are finding in your schools or with your teaching or with the kids you come into contact with this kind of a problem? When I was a kid, we had hobbies. I'm an old lady. And I can remember the first television we got. And it was tiny. It was black and white. And it only had programming from about 4 until 8pm. And it had, at that time, two channels. And we were allowed to watch for half an hour. But what we spent our time doing, obviously, we were playing outside. We were building things inside if it rained. We had hobbies. That word that some kids don't even know the meaning of these days. And in particular, we read. And we read and we read copiously because that's what you did when it rained. This particularly for boys. Now all of these things, of course, the kids think they're playing. But what they're doing is their imaginations are working over time and they're also observing great knowledge. Stamp collecting in particular, my gosh. I have met one child in Hong Kong who collects stamps. And I went to see him. And he could tell me about every country in the world that's phenomenal. But he is the class geek. That's how he's regarded. Now when I was a kid, everybody collected stamps. This one is fascinating. Two years ago, Mattel posted its biggest loss ever. And they're the producers of Barbie dolls. And you're like, Barbie dolls? That is absolutely, that was sort of fundamental for girls. Everyone had a Barbie doll and dressed their Barbies and played with their dolls. They've lost those little kids to digital games. I love that picture of the guy bumping into the pole because, of course, that's what happens regularly. Every day I watch kids, adults walking on the street and saying, oops, they're going to hit that bad. But this is where the real crime begins. Here. Very serendipitously. My husband, who's French, pointed out to me an article in the Figaro just yesterday. And this is absolutely phenomenal, but it's not a unique occurrence. These are basically kindergarten psychologists and teachers who are reporting babies who have less than 10 words in their vocabulary who cannot speak. They talk in particular in this article about a little girl whose parents were terribly proud of her because at the age of three she's starting school and she can speak some words of English. And this is because she's been playing digital games since she's been 18 months old. That's when she got her first laptop. But as soon as this little child hit school where there were no tablets, she couldn't relate to anybody. She didn't respond to her own name. She couldn't stack blocks and in particular she couldn't play without a teacher sitting beside her using, manipulating her limbs to follow what the other kids were doing. This child was almost unresponsive. And it's a very interesting article because basically and you'll be getting... I've got a handout for everyone to take home and read, which will have my top tips on it but also have the references for all of the literature I'll be referring to. But what's happening is that there seems to be this explosion of autism in the population and yet for a lot of kids that are diagnosed as autistic you take their screens away and within months they're normal. So it's not autism. And of course ADHD. Children unable to focus for any length of time. So this is pretty scary but then on the other hand back in 2014 it was being reported by teachers in the UK infants unable to stack building blocks. It's really scary. And if you look at this article basically there was a increase from 1 in 33 children to 1 in 5 over the last 12 years who were reporting major developmental delays. And here's the American Association of Pediatrics. It's fascinating you know. I look for the Australian Association of Pediatrics and I look for the UK Association of Pediatrics and they're not coming out and just putting it bluntly what we ought to be doing. The American Association is terrific. And they're saying basically 1 or 2 hours a day of high quality content will stop and yet the average kids 7 hours a day. So I just don't know why we're doing it and why we're doing it to our kids. But I think it's basically first of all it's the great sort of pacifier. It's very easy to give a kid a screen and the kid will be quiet and the kid won't be outside at fear of the roaming pedophile. There are no more pedophiles today than there ever were but the fact is there's no more kids on the streets. So if you're the parent who decides to use some common sense and get their kids playing outside and using the streets I guess that kid's at more risk. But we all grew up playing outside. And these kids are basically in their rooms. Now we heard of the horrible batch of suicides recently here in Hong Kong from these kids who just felt so alone and so isolated. And I know that at least one of those suicides was associated with a row over basically the boy would not stop using his digital screen. So it doesn't have to be this way. This is a child and she's one of a few I've got a clutch of kids who are regular winners in my writing competition they're there every time and my god they can write. And I'd love you to have a look actually at my writing competitions. It's on my blog so if you go it's just Sarah Brennan blog I've just announced the results of the latest one but it's very interesting basically you get these kids who can write their heads off and they have beautiful literacy skills they have the power of imagination they have lyrical language A lot of these kids from the Indian subcontinent which is really interesting also we've got some fabulous Chinese kids from Shanghai and from Hong Kong and we've got a few kids coming up from Australia, America and the UK so the kids are there but these kids now are the exception rather than the rule the kids that can literally write beautifully this little girl Gemma Julian I always talk about because the first time she entered one of my competitions her writing was so good I didn't believe she'd done it so I wrote and said well what school does she go to well actually she's home educated which is interesting so I write to the mum and I say can you verify for me that this is your child's own work and she wrote back and said she said do you want to see the rest and this is what this girl's doing and this was when she was eight and you know she's got the bees flirting with the daffodils I mean what child thinks of bees flirting with the daffodils but this child has a beautiful creative brain now I've made a friend of Gemma because when I go to Sydney I meet up with her and her mum and I asked this child how much time do you actually spend on screens and she said a little bit but she said I find it a bit boring she's got pen pals but she actually writes them by hand she's got pen pals all over the place and she does a lot of drawing and writing and so she'll use the internet occasionally but she doesn't do social media because she thinks it's stupid and to write is it stupid especially at that age my gosh so we all know that you have to read before you can learn but why is it important to read books and in particular why is it important to read real books as in print books the sort of ones we can pick up and hold has anyone heard of this guy before yes now this is absolutely essential reading for everybody who wants to join the fight against illiteracy read this guy this book was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize and he is remarkable you will have the references on a handout which I think Shari might be getting but you can give me your cards and I will send you my talk and in particular all of the referrals you can do and that might be better because then you can just click on the links and you'll be right through you won't have to type them all into computers but this guy is fascinating he's a real thinker I think he's a bit of a seer he doesn't just address children's literature he addresses adult literacy and he also addresses things like for example what the hell are we doing with our bathrooms when you can't manually turn on a tap anywhere anymore before you've even set up off the seat but this whole idea of basically how we're digitalising our worlds to such an extent that when we have the next sun or the solar flare and it's not a case of if it's a case of when this solar flare is coming it's going to knock out every computer on this planet and then let's see if the human race can survive and for that this is not on my page but you can write it down next time you're on a plane and watch a documentary called Low and Behold it's by the German writer and philosopher Werner Herzog and he is looking at the internet and what the hell is happening with the internet and he is talking about the solar flare that occurred in the 19th century about 1886 and at that time every telegraph system in the world was knocked out and it didn't affect too many people because not many people were using the telegraph however when we have the solar flare that happens and we are overdue a major solar flare it's going to knock out every single computer system here on Earth for quite some time now the US government knows about this they've got a bit of a sort of contingency plan but nobody tells us about it just be careful you've got a tap that turns on of its own volition that is actually connected to a water supply that doesn't depend on electronic devices to turn it on or off because we're going to have major problems with everything when this solar flare happens we are getting too smart for our own good however that's not the subject of my talk today this guy does address it he's got a fabulous blog and now I'm going to try and remember the name of it rough type R-O-U-G-H T-Y-P-E because the guys are thinker and we need more of these thinkers today because a lot of us are not thinking enough right what he does in his book and you know when I found his book I found it in Paris actually and I was just like hello Lulia there is a god because for many years I have been so upset about seeing kids addicted to screens particularly little kids I mean even to the point that I go up and actually say to their parents do you know what you're doing to your kids brain I have been told to my own business on more than one occasion I get so distressed though when I see kids put in front of screens at dinner tables but I found this book and I thought hello Lulia there's the science and since then I've been following the science because it's not just me being a Luddite it's not just me not getting with the program there is a major neurological, neurophysical developmental problem with kids being subjected to overuse of screens and most kids are now overusing screens so he talks about basically how our brains have been wired and he talks about first of all we're wired for flight and fight because we have to shift attention to the air or to avoid the saber tooth tiger and that ensured our survival so we had fairly rudimentary wiring of the brain back then and then we go through the oral tradition where the wiring changes immediately so that we can remember and we can repeat we become all rhythmic and then the earliest writing so again we've suddenly got new neural pathways developing right through to this fab chap in the second century who invented the first properly usable paper here in China and this fantastic guy B. Sheng everyone talks about Gutenberg and it wasn't Gutenberg at all who invented movable type printing it was this guy here and very little is known about him they think he was just a peasant who was very clever and so he started carving individual Chinese characters on blocks and then he ordered them on a grid depending on their meaning and then instead of having to do these massive great carvings on an entire wooden block of an entire poster so you had to carve every character he just selected every block and that way he could shift it around and it was it appeared to be a lot quicker it never really took off in China because there are thousands of pictograms and no one can do all the pictograms but when it hit the west with a 26 letter alphabet it took off in the meantime in the middle ages you've got basically knowledge was in the hands of a few it was basically the church and it was the nobility and the power structure was unaltered and the peasants didn't have a chance because the only people who were educated were the people at the top then the merchant class starts reading this is fascinating apparently there were no gaps and no punctuation it must have been very hard to read so they insisted on the gaps in the punctuation at the middle ages and this is the big thing in Europe where suddenly you get this virtuous cycle books are suddenly affordable and plentiful and the common man starts reading and it's absolutely no coincidence that it was the common man starting to read and this is what it did to our brains this one in particular the ability to concentrate intently over a long period of time on a static object it led to deep thought amongst ordinary people that's you and me and not just the people at the top of the hierarchy and of course that turned everything upside down so you ended up I love this quote this is from Nicholas Carr deep concentration combined with a highly active and efficient deciphering of text and interpretation meaning and I love this and the quiet spaces opened up by the prolonged undistracted reading of a book people start thinking deeply and that's what we got we got the renaissance absolute explosion of ideas of thought and creativity and the reformation the whole power structure was turned upside down and the age of enlightenment where suddenly the individual was important and you know radical ideas like democracy started spreading through the world that's what books did and that's what reading did and I chose these books very deliberately you got Gibbon who did the first ever proper history Darwin it was interesting because when I did this I actually started having difficulty around about the 1990s where do I find the world changing book in the 1990s and that's the one I found but the reason why of course because it was in the 1990s that everything changed and suddenly we all start getting onto the internet and then of course this one has been the phenomenon of the last five years do you know what that one is think about it 50 shades of grey isn't it an indictment of us as a human species that this is the publishing phenomenon of the last five years I think every word of this quote from Nicholas Carr when I read it I said yes yes yes this is what's going to happen what's happening to our minds so he goes into how the brains wired and you see I always thought that our brains were pretty much you know they were pristine when we were born but undeveloped and then they got developed through our education and then around about the age of 22 they started declining rapidly and by the age of 90 we were dead meat and that apparently is not true apparently as far as neurologists are concerned the brain keeps wiring all the time in response to the stimulus you put in front of it all the time right up to the time we die the brain is changing changing changing so what you do a lot you get really good at and what you don't do much basically the brains capacity to deal with that deteriorates and you can't do it very well and that's of course why we do best what we practice the most has anyone read this guy Malcolm Gladwell he's fascinating I love this guy he's such an original thinker who thinks outside the box but this outliers book is fascinating because he's looking at the concept of genius does it really exist and he says no it doesn't he said maybe Mozart was a genius maybe but no one else is a genius at all and having done studies particularly on the kids that are absolutely fantastic at sport and the kids that are fantastic at music he says it's nothing to do with innate ability it's everything to do with the amount of time they practice it and he talks in particular about a German school where kids go in at the age of 12 and come out at the age of 16 and these kids are all regarded as prodigies when they go in they're all absolutely brilliant at violin, piano or whatever when they come out at 16 there's a marked difference between the kids so what they did was study why these kids different are they actually inherently more able but no they weren't it wasn't that it's just they put in more hours so it's this concept of 10,000 hours so if we look at what repeatedly reading books does for the brain interpretation, interpretation of meeting imagination, making associations drawing inferences and sort of developing new ideas you can imagine what that does to a kid's brain and if they can rack up 10,000 hours you're going to have a kid with absolutely fabulous general knowledge a kid who has fabulous vocabulary and a kid who can think for themselves I love this quote from Einstein and he's absolutely right everyone talks about you know we don't need books anymore because we've got Google but that's just knowledge and if knowledge were everything then we wouldn't have the problems we have today and what we need today particularly with our kids is kids who can think outside the box because we've got ideas that we certainly never expected to face terrible problems I mean obviously global warming global terrorism and how about artificial intelligence that's a doozy I don't know if you've read the latest Vanity Fair but my gosh Elon Musk good old Elon Musk is taking on the AI industry because it is led at the moment by a guy in London who actually thinks it's okay to say that they are inventing artificial intelligence that will make humans irrelevant and he thinks it's okay to say that why that guy isn't behind bars I do not know he talks about having gone to a meeting with this guy and out comes another guy who says you know I should shoot him right away because that will save the human race now these guys, these brilliant minds are actually working on making artificial intelligence to supplant us it's horrifying and that's what our kids are facing so what we want is kids we want kids who are articulate kids with ideas kids who are thinkers kids who are originals and kids who can challenge this new hierarchy we need kids who have minds but what's happening to kids minds at the moment now I love this one because I say to kids when I go to schools I do this talk for little kids believe in me and my gosh to the kids they they catch on it's the parents who are the problem the kids get it and I say to them who read Harry Potter and they all put up their hands and I say right when you read Harry Potter was he naked and there's this little titter like this and I say no no seriously and they're like no and I'm like well does J.K. Rowling tell you what he was wearing every day and they're like no and I say well who put on the clothes and the fascinating thing of course is this process of what's called sensory simulation as you read and there have been some fabulous experiments done recently on adults and what they do is they wire them up all over the brain and then they get them to read a story about a man who's climbing a mountain and he slips and he falls and he slips and he falls and he gets to the top and they all pull together and what they're finding is that the brain is lighting up in the reader in exactly the same place it would be lighting up if they were that person climbing the mountain that's what happens when we read and we don't know it we are imagining ourselves in that role in every particular we are seeing it we are hearing it and even more importantly we are feeling it now imagine what that does if you're doing that for 10,000 years you might like to be somebody else there's a lot of studies that I'll show you later on empathy people who read particularly fiction are far more likely to adopt a child to give to charity to work for an NGO for basically to do things for other people than people who do not read lots of fiction there are wonderful studies on this there was a study done two years ago in the United States that had been done 10 years earlier at a university and these 19 year olds and they all came from similar socioeconomic backgrounds but they were wired up and they were showing distressing images and 12 years ago these kids their brains flashed up all over the place they were distressed by the images and then two years ago they read exactly the same experiment with 19 year olds entering university and they showed them the same images and there was barely a response in their brains and what the researchers concluded not me but the researchers concluded that the only difference between these two cohorts was that one cohort was used to reading books and read copiously and the other cohort had stopped reading books that was the difference so we've got to ask ourselves what kind of society we want this is fascinating this is another book that I would urge you to read particularly if you're a parent you've seen editions before the poor guy died just fairly recently wonderful man but he talks about the fact that even in children's story books there are double the number of rare words than in adult conversation ah we've got the handouts great so you can get these afterwards but yeah absolutely so I say to kids you know say to mum and dad sorry I'm too busy to talk to you I'm going to read a children's book because I'm going to get better language out of the children's book but this is fascinating in children's books there is this rich these rich words now I am not panning the internet as a whole it's a fabulous tool and I would certainly not have been able to build my business without the internet and nor would most of us be able to function now with it as a tool for business so as a tool it has many astounding benefits and obviously these are the four main ones your access to information search and filtering tools ease of access, more connections, more ideas etc I even put hearts on this just to prove I am not someone who hates the internet I'm not, I need it I need it every day and yet Steve Jobs was a low-tech parent he did not allow his children access to iPads and tablets and indeed it's interesting in Silicon Valley you've got these Steiner Waldorf schools where the kids aren't allowed access to screens at all in primary school and it is packed with the kids of these techy founders you know there's very experimental they're right on the cutting edge of technology so what do they know that they're not telling us and here's some fabulous recent studies reduced IQ and short-term memory and workers distracted by multitask and digital devices I love this one the Norwegian study it's fascinating it's actually been reported and repeated in America if you give two people of apparently equal education and intelligence a book and you randomise them with the print book and one to kindle and then when they've read it you test them on recall it's something like a third less if you've read it on kindle now they think what it is is it something to do with pixels and they think that you know pixels while it's not picked up by your eye it is picked up by your inner brain so that is constant distraction and why you're not absorbing the information in the same way I love this one American linguistics academic he actually asked these students university students be honest how likely are you to be distracted if you're studying from hard copy 1% on screen 90% what's it doing to our brains now you've got, you will have all the actual references so don't worry about it you'll be able to look it up for yourself and read it so if we look at what if we repeatedly use the internet cursory reading, hurry distracted thinking and superficial learning and teachers will tell you time and again they are fighting all the time cut and paste and I don't know when I was little and I was given an assignment on elephants I used to go to the library and pull out every single book because that was my only source of information and then I'd have to read those books to get the information about elephants I needed but because I couldn't photocopy it I had to think for myself what information am I selecting and I'd write it down and then I'd end up with pages of information and then from that I would have to select what am I going to put in my project whereas today what the kids do is they go to the first page of Google only very lucky to even get to the second page they'll never get that rare nugget about elephants that's on page 20 of Google so they go to the first page, they all look at the same articles they cut and paste from them and then the primary skill is how do I manipulate this information so it doesn't look plagiarised that's the primary skill that they're learning about elephants and at the end of the day they know very little about elephants they remember very little about elephants what they do know is how to manipulate a mouse they know how to cut and paste and they know how to basically change the words up so it doesn't look plagiarised now we all know I don't know about you, I'm making a point now once a month I learn a new phone number I'm doing it on purpose because I discovered to my shock and horror you know I was thinking about it and I thought well crikey how many phone numbers do I know but I knew about five and that was it this is terrible, we all used to have phone numbers just right through our heads so of course we are outsourcing our memories and that's all very well but what is that actually doing to our brains because if we're not practicing memory then we're not going to be good at memorising other things and then also what happens when you lose your mobile phone and your computer goes on the blink or god forbid there is a sun flare we're not going to be able to phone our mums so it's pretty scary we need to use our brains and we need to keep our memories sharp this business here the automated information sorters of course with google or with any of the other search engines as we all know they were put on the first page the pages that are searched the most so everybody starts thinking exactly the same that's if they're thinking at all their information all comes off page one of this information sorter and they're not going to be thinking outside the box and this empathy and compassion business the other thing with empathy and compassion apparently is that these are called higher emotions and what has to happen is that it develops over a long period of time with a slow drip drip into the inner brain now you don't get slow drip drip into the inner brain if the brain is then constantly distracted on a more shallow level so I think we're going backwards I really do I think our brains are going backwards to brains that have very little capacity to remember to brains that are distracted all the time and particularly the children I mean the problem is we all grew up in the linear age so we all have an experience and a knowledge of what it's like to live without these tools but children think that this is the way humans are and they will always choose digital they'll go for digital because it's mighty attractive and particularly digital games and the horrific thing obviously about digital games is that the makers of digital games make them addictive by manipulating the pixels they know exactly how fast they've got to get these pixels moving to actually switch off the critical elements in the brain and to switch on or to make those games addictive it is so cynical it is unbelievable so what's going to happen to our singular intelligences I'm lucky to have the most wonderful husband and he's a Frenchman and he has been reading all his life and he I kind of like my you know some of my BBC2 sewing programs and cooking programs and things like that he never watches them he sits there and reads every single night and I've learnt to keep him company most nights and boy has it done a lot of good to me it's been fabulous but I have to say that Philippe we actually wouldn't need Google in our house because his knowledge of the world and of politics and of particularly history and how history has affected politics is profound now the reason why is that we've lived it it's just a man who has read all his life and what we do now for Christmas which is rather fabulous and I'd encourage you all to do it is instead of getting the piece of jewellery or the piece of tech spend that same money on books because we do that now and you end up with your reading for the year and that way you can explore themes and I now know so much more about fantasy eclat Austria which is the first world war and then I start reading because my darling Philippe starts really getting interesting books out there for me and now I know quite a lot and can tell you quite a lot and that's only happened in the space of a couple of years but the beauty of reading and reading in depth is that you can start getting to the real nuggets of books the gems of books and you start building this idiosyncratic intelligence because no one else has read the same books as you so you end up with a spider web of intense knowledge about a particular subject this is what I want kids to develop I did this talk at Australian International School two days ago and I can tell you the kids aren't going oh no give them a digital games they are listening intently and I had kids coming straight back afterwards a little girl saying how much per day do you think I should spend on social media and I said well what do you think social media is doing for your brain particularly at that age OMG that's very silly she's like uh like this alright well you're going to get very good at what you do the most so I reckon I would limit it to half an hour and then I would say to your friends sorry you've got to go off and read a book and make that trendy make that cool get all the kids onto reading books the kids get it it's the mums and dads out there who aren't getting it and I think it's because it's kind of easy to think and it's desirable to think that you are being a good parent keeping your child up to date with digital this is why I think even babies are given digital I was a Kina Kanya bookshop in Sydney two years ago and I was talking to the bookseller there and he said he had had a parent in the day before who wanted a book about digital programming for a five year old now that's astounding schools think that's important I say there should be no screens in primary school the more I read about this the more I think we should get screens out of primary school and I'll give you some research later on in the next OECD report that came out last year and what that report said that there is simply no benefit whatsoever that has been found over studying it now for at least a decade there is no benefit to educating children on screens none at all in fact the reverse the results are going down now there are always individual kids with certain neurological difficulties who can process material better off a screen and I say give them a screen but that's the exception rather than rule and you do it on a medical report but for everybody else out there we have to teach our kids the primary ability to think to focus on a static object to read and to start developing all this rich language and this ability to process ideas to make connections all those things you get through reading we must do that we've got to turn it back so my top 10 tips first check your child's eyesight because some kids are reluctant readers because they just can't see the page okay you've got to give your child the gift of time this is such a huge one these days particularly here in Hong Kong and also in Shanghai I did this talk at Sharton Junior the other day and I shall tell you a secret that's got a very enlightened head teacher his name is Perry Tienisi I adore Perry Perry has just made homework at school and he's very professional he says that there is no benefit that has been found on papers on kids doing homework over the years that shows there's a benefit to kids that age having to do homework after school they should be outside playing they should be reading and they should be having fun and socially interacting and that is better for them as students and you know who he's had problems from? the parents up in arms absolutely up in arms he has them all in individually and talks them all individually this is why we're doing it it's actually an academic benefit to your child not to be doing the homework so what a lot of these parents have done is because their child now has acres of time and god forbid a child should have time on their hands they have stacked them up with extracurricular activities and learning so I spoke to these grade 5s and I asked them how many extracurricular activities do you do one child put up his hand I said congratulations, that's reasonable who does 3 more hands their median number was 5 extracurricular activities and these kids are expected to basically be able to breathe it's awful and then I had one dear little girl came up to me afterwards ringing her hands and she said you've got to talk to my parents and I said what's going on well it's just that they think that weekends are for music school they think it's for work and then I'm doing come on and I'm doing this, that and the other this beautiful intelligent little girl was being crushed and I said well what would you do if you had time read, that's what she wants to do, read and this little darling child and I said but you can't be good at you know I mean and I say to kids talk to mum and dad and say to them I want to do only 2 or maybe 1 choose your favourites I only do those favourite activities because if they're favourites you'll do them well and you'll enjoy them and that's what it's all about if you're studying Mandarin if you're studying advanced maths if you're studying I don't know French, if you're studying acrobatics if you're studying ballet you're not going to become world class at all those things you don't need them and you absolutely don't need that kind of a childhood which is no childhood at all what you need is time time to build things out of cornflakes packets time to get bored boredom is terribly important okay I've been told I've got 5 minutes left are you ready it's all on the list anyway but we're going to shoot through this how to create time, reorder priorities be realistic about their abilities only choose 1 or 2 activities and the rest of the time give them time to breathe never force your child to read what you do is your brainwash there is a billion dollar multi-billion dollar industry digital industry out there that is set on brainwashing not just your kids but you so you have to brainwash them back this is what you say to the kids we're a family that read books okay now this is really fascinating this is an absolute top tip there are two absolute top tips you have to read in front of your children and read for pleasure not just on holidays on the beach you have to do it every night you get out your book and you read and you comment and you talk about it at the table and talk so if you don't read books of pleasure yourself you can talk till you're blue in the face to your child that they should be doing it but they're going to be watching what you do and if what you do as a lot of us attempted to do and I am no exception I can be on my Richard's screen in the evening if you're on your screen kids will think that's what you do as a grown up I love that picture beautiful that's what life used to be like and we can recreate it boys do what dads do if you've got a son who's a reluctant reader and many boys are the major problem with reluctant reading dad if he's away on business a lot and he comes back he has to decide is it kicking a football or is it reading with my child what is more important because if the dad reads with a child the child thinks ah that's what's important make over your home it was very hard for me to find that photo and in fact you go into a lot of homes these days bookshelves are filled with photographs and medals and obje d'ar but they're not filled with books take your TV off centre stage so it's not the first thing a kid sees it's all visual cues the first thing a kid sees has to be books not the television a kid's bedroom must have bookshelves and this is a lovely idea you can get these online that's a good use of online get them an exliberist stamp very exciting get them a library membership card get them a bedside light this is probably the most efficient way of creating a great reader and that is reading aloud to your child and you can do that right up until their teens you can if you get the right material because actually what kids want is they want you all kids want mum and dad and they want your love and your attention so if what your love and your attention for them is associated with is every day we curl up with a book and they'll be a Pavlovian effect and they will believe forever after they'll feel warm, cosy and full of love when they see a book that's how you make them love books associated with your time and your attention so it most of all improves their attitudes to reading but it's fascinating if you read to a child from the time it's born then by the time it hits school it's two years ahead of its peers and that persists right up to university two years ahead and that's how you make them love books and your attention general knowledge demonstrates you think books are important builds their attention span and it associates reading with pleasure fabulous experiment this you will find in Jim Tralees' book but all this headmaster did in a failing school was to improve the lighting and then to have the teachers do ten minutes reading aloud at the beginning of the day ten minutes sustained silent reading and he turned the school around in just four years and that same experiment and you make it special and above all when you're reading to your child you turn off your digital devices and you close the door so that they get the message books are more important than digital screens family outings we're blessed here in Hong Kong that's me with one of my book launches but we are blessed with many many book launches you've just got to get on the mailing list of people like Bookazine and you can get your kid to book launches fabulous and then when you go home you rave to your children about meeting the authors and about the books you're just conditioning their brain we're the family that revolves around books books for birthdays, what happened to that and you get the kids to choose the books finding the hook there are some kids that no matter what you seem to do they're still not interested in reading this is where your librarians come in handy and your teachers because there are the children's book selection now is greater than it's ever been they're totally hooked into things like I don't know soccer or I don't know grooming horses or racing cars or even even if they're totally hooked into their digital games get books about kids who got involved in a digital game you know you can do it that way just find the subject that turns them on and if all else fails the Guinness Book of Records always always succeeds take an interest in what your child's reading rank bribery and corruption I'm all into blackmail bribery and corruption you give them a bedside lamp and you give them a later bedtime if they're reading a book but the one thing you do is get digital out of their bedrooms it's hard in Hong Kong we have such tiny houses it's really difficult but you got to do it you can't have them with digital in their rooms and you can sneak it under the radar especially with boys it's a goodie you've got to be really inventive and think how to left field reading reading reading reading as a normal part of their lives and this is huge for some reason parents seem to have this sort of idea that digital technology and the internet is sort of like sacrosanct and that they cannot say no to their child because somehow they're breaching some unwritten law and it's not true all parents have the right to say no and I always say to mums and dads ok for salesman comes to your door and he says I have got a drink for your child and this drink is going to inhibit social development their language development it's going to inhibit their gross motor development it's going to inhibit their fine motor development it is going to bring them backwards so far that they are going to be literally when they get to school slightly catatonic you would report that person to social services or to the police and they'd be locked up in jail and yet parents are bringing in these screens right through the door thinking they're doing their children good computers are tools not toys get them off the digital games you can follow my blog because my blog's the anti-digital blog I have writing competitions I have amazing books they can read and they can read about their favourite authors and this is the last thing who wants to be rich and famous this is what studies in the United States that have followed kids who are readers for decades shows that basically if you're a reader that's what you can expect I don't put up a slide for the other side but that was fascinating all the ones more likely to be put in prison it's pretty awful and I love this one for Abraham Lincoln he grew up in a a hut with dirt floor and he said it was books that made him into what he was and we mustn't forget that so and this is true so that's it sorry I know I'm probably talking to a converted and you've all of you know all of this anyway read the handouts and at the back you've got all of the stuff I've been digging up but there is so much more we've just got to be aware now if you just put into Google or whatever delayed development digital screens you come up with a plethora so I just say what the hell are we doing and why isn't someone going to the government and why isn't the government taking on the digital industry and saying no for children anyway thank you