News Release
March, 2005
Character Education
(This is the abridged version of a Speech delivered to the Market Forum at the London Book Fair in March 2005 by John Pittar-Milly, Molly Group Managing Director)
Thank you for your interest in coming here this morning. I hope you will leave with a better insight into what we are trying to do by promoting character education through our Milly, Molly books and associated program elements.
What is Character Education?
In brief, character education, values education, life skills education-call it what you wish-are all terms used in different countries for one and the same thing-teaching children to appreciate, and adopt, the fundamental values that underpin all societies throughout the world. These include:
- Common values, such as honesty, responsibility, loyalty, forgiveness, respect.
- Broader values, such as punctuality, coping with grief, care and consideration.
- Topical values such as acceptance of difference, bullying, diet, exercise, appreciation of nature and care for the environment
-to name but a few.
Why do we need to teach values?
Children are our future. The need to equip them with the knowledge to make the right choices in life, and to help them grow with a strong self-esteem to reach their full potential, requires character education. For so long the emphasis in schools has been focused on numeracy and literacy, with teachers traditionally believing that the core elements of character education were the domain of the parents. And so they are, but not exclusively.
The headline article in a recent newspaper in Perth, Australia, entitled "Suicide boy a victim of bullies", explained how an eighteen-year-old student had been bullied, taunted and mocked by his peers at school over many years. Evidence that this tragedy is not an isolated case is confirmed by research that tells us that 20 per cent of youth suicides are related to bullying.
The past 25 years has seen a 1,300 per cent increase in youth suicide in rural Australia, a 300% rise in urban areas, and escalating rates of substance abuse and depression among the young. These statistics are unfortunately replicated in most countries of the world.
The infamous Columbine massacre in the U.S. a few short years ago contained strong overtones of bullying-and yet another mass school shooting tragedy occurred in the US only yesterday. We do not yet know the life story of the teenage perpetrator who shot himself at the conclusion of his murderous shooting spree, but I'll wager he didn't have a balanced or supportive childhood, or the kind of character education to motivate positive responses to his circumstances.
Each of these tragedies and their statistics represent an important wake-up call, and we believe that parents and schools are at last waking up. According to Scholastic Australia, Character Education is now one of the fastest growing areas of primary education. The recent February edition of Focus, Scholastic's premier magazine for teachers, featured Milly, Molly on the cover, and the content of the entire magazine was devoted to Character Education.
This emphasis on Character Education is being replicated by Governments, and by educators around the world, who are concerned enough to require that those fundamental values that underpin all societies, are now taught as a vital part of the core curriculum.
Why use Milly, Molly books?
Milly, Molly books are first and foremost storybooks that children simply love and relate to. Secondly, each book contains an implicit value, which can be explored in a manner that leads to open discussion, thought and change. Each book has a simple Parent Guide-or for schools, a comprehensive Teaching Guide.
Milly, Molly books have been strongly commended for their literary merit by some of the world's leading professors of English; for their beneficial content by world recognised child development professors and psychologists-and also by best selling children's author, Robert Munsch, who wrote quite simply, "Milly, Molly is a wonderful bunch of books."
Since the series was launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2001, Milly, Molly Books have been contracted to 104 countries, and published in 25 languages. From an international, educational perspective the distributors now include:
- Beijing Normal University Press, (Asia's most prestigious University)
- Scholastic Australia
- Scholastic New Zealand
- Heinemann (South Africa, Botswana, Tanzania and Ireland)
- Editorial Everest for Spanish and Portuguese languages (together with Lectorum Publishing-Scholastic USA's Spanish subsidiary), to name a few.
Why has Milly, Molly been so universally accepted?
Milly, Molly books have played a significant part in pioneering character education throughout the world-primarily I think, because all cities and countries are now multi-cultural, and can relate to Milly, Molly's core essence-promoting the acceptance of diversity through the life experiences of Milly and Molly and their multicultural friends. Their message, "we may look different but we feel the same."
Secondly, by providing material that has successfully touched people and educators throughout the world-in many cases helping to bridge the cultural divide between children, and also facilitating communication and understanding between children and adults.
In January 2005, the Federal Government of Nigeria announced that it had approved, and procured, the Milly, Molly books for use for its Universal Basic Education scheme. The government announcement went on, "... Milly, Molly books, targeted at children 4 - 6 years are essentially the classroom and home character education readers that will help in the process of nation-building by forging peace and unity among the children of today. The books inspire children to accept difference and help build their self confidence."
This is a fitting tribute to author Gill Pittar's objective, which is "to help find a peaceful solution to the problems of the world through the education of children, and to have every child grow up with healthy self-esteem." Literacy is the first step, and her Milly, Molly storybooks with their implicit life-skills, help parents, teachers, friends and relatives to achieve this goal. Friendship, sharing, joy and accomplishment transcend the boundaries of race, creed and colour-but so too, do feelings of pain, heartache, loss of identity, and low self-esteem. The Milly, Molly stories show how these things can be explored in each child's life in an appealing and easily accessible way.
To help facilitate literacy, and enable the dream to have every child owning its very own book, the Milly, Molly Charitable Trust was formed in 1999-while Milly, Molly as a global brand was still but a distant dream. Since then, substantial donations of Milly, Molly books and dolls have quietly been made to needy children in New Zealand, Afghanistan, East Timor, Fiji, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Recently the Trust changed its name to The Friends of Milly, Molly (NZ) Inc. and formed a strategic alliance with World Vision New Zealand. Books have recently been given to Tanzania and Uganda, and the two organisations are firmly committed to working on projects together. Part of the proceeds from the sale of every book goes to The Friends of Milly, Molly, which aims to promote the acceptance of diversity and the learning of life skills through literacy- "for every child, a book."
In the U.S., an IRS approved 501 (C) (3) registered charity, The Friends of Milly, Molly Inc. has recently been incorporated to raise funds from the North American market for the same purpose. It is hoped to expand The Friends fund raising into other key countries, and its charitable works into other needy countries of the world- "for every child, a book."
Where to from here?
a) Multi-lingual, interactive CD ROMS.
Increasingly we are finding that many countries, where English is not the first language, are looking to stimulate the love and use of the English language-and combine it with character education by allowing children to venture outside of the graded reader methodology, and experience language in its more natural usage. Many countries wish to use Milly, Molly books for this purpose.
Beijing Normal University Press are now publishing multi-lingual Milly, Molly books, which they will introduce to schools and to the trade throughout China. To complement this initiative, Milly Molly Group Holdings has entered into a joint venture agreement with Popular e-Learning Holdings of Singapore, to produce multi-lingual interactive CD ROMS-not only for the Chinese market, but also for other major languages.
The highly interactive and user-friendly program facilitates reading and comprehension skills, and promotes independent learning for young readers. This development has begun with the production of the 8 Set 1 books in English. These have been released here at the London Book Fair, and they contain four main elements:
- Listen to the story. Children can listen to a delightful narration of the story and follow along with ease as the words are highlighted, word for word.
- Read the Story. Children can listen to, and then repeat the story to improve diction, or alternatively they can read the story on their own, and have their progress monitored, and automatically corrected. The progress is also graphed, and a report is generated at the conclusion. This report can very easily be set up to monitor the child's progress over a period of time. A classroom full of children can log in separately, and the system will maintain and track them all.
- Create your own story. Children can personalize and act out the story by recording their own dialogue, and then create a drama that they can replay as a miniature movie.
- Have fun. The CD's contain a variety of games and creative exercises for children. Each one is designed to reinforce the story and its underlying value.
Sixteen schools in Singapore, under the supervision of an internationally respected educationalist, are currently trailing these interactive CD's, and the early results are very positive. Both the Singapore stand at the LBF, and the Milly, Molly stand have the CD's available for preview and demonstration purposes.
b) Television.
The upcoming television series is the last element of Milly, Molly that I would like to share with you today. The interesting thing about this is that in general, educationalists are not at all supportive of children's television shows. In the case of Milly, Molly however, we have received universal support and encouragement to produce a television series. The series will follow the stories closely, and we plan to package Video's and DVD's of the stories, with supporting Teaching Guides for classroom use. The combination of being able to screen a 7-11 minute, fully animated television story, followed by some key discussion, reading and practical exercises, is expected to make the teaching experience stimulating, fun and effective-with lasting benefits for children.
In order to ensure output of the highest quality, we have assembled an internationally recognized team that includes:
- Beyond Group-one of the world's largest children's television production and distribution companies, from Australia. Beyond is ably led by Ron Saunders, an EMMY award finalist, who has an array of impressive credits to his name.
- Newman International Licensing, the largest licensing group in the southern hemisphere. Newman has managed all Warner Bros licensing down-under for the last 17 years, including Bob the Builder, Thomas and Friends, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter etc., etc.
Every book and every product range needs to create awareness and demand to succeed in the global market place and Milly, Molly is no different. It is not sufficient to have a wonderful product line without the ability to promote it both widely and persistently.
Small publishing houses such as ours will never have the capital resources to contemplate that on a countrywide basis, let alone on a global basis. Without television exposure, growth will be steady-with it, potentially meteoric. We are indeed striving for the stars!