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  • 1 year ago

Former schoolteacher and Chief Secretary Farley Augustine is tonight calling on parents to choose books as gifts for their children this Christmas and not toys.
Transcript
00:00You know, reading is an extremely important skill, and I'll give you a joke.
00:06I remember my parents used to tell me, you come first in test, you will get a bicycle.
00:10I never got the bicycle.
00:12They will just buy books as a Christmas present every single year.
00:16Not that I'm recommending that parents don't buy toys, but I'm recommending strongly that
00:22parents buy books and that they encourage reading.
00:25It opens the imagination.
00:27It broadens the vocabulary.
00:29Chief Secretary Farley Augustine and I spoke with members of the media following a tour
00:34of the Logus Hall on Wednesday.
00:36It allows people to have an appreciation for how other people around the world live and
00:41other cultures.
00:42And you can get that from the written pages.
00:45And you see that thing called imagination when you read and you have to imagine what's
00:50in the pages because you can't see the actual photo or the video.
00:54That helps with simple things like the essay writing or the creative writing.
00:59It helps with your ability to construct a prose, which is one of the weak areas, I think,
01:05when we look at student performance in the examinations, particularly at the essay level.
01:11Mr. Augustine said he knows it is a difficult time for parents with the advent of social
01:17media.
01:18And so I understand and appreciate that the children now have high-speed Internet.
01:22We have good Internet penetration on the island and constant access.
01:25Parents this Christmas season have to be deliberate in shutting off the devices, shutting
01:31off the television and encouraging two things, encouraging reading and encouraging them to
01:35go outside the home and to interact with nature and to play outside.
01:40Those are critical components of their development.
01:42PDP leader Watson Duke and minority leader Kelvin Morris also spoke with the media during
01:48a tour of the Logus Hall.
01:51John C. Maxwell, development leaders, I think that everybody in Tobago should have a book
01:59like this because we need to be an island that is churning out leaders.
02:04We need to churn out more leaders in Tobago.
02:06Let's see what Mr. Morris is reading.
02:08I'm trying to learn how to make these special grills.
02:12Oh.
02:13Yes, so this is my grill cooking book, everything barbecue.
02:17Oh, you're interested in barbecue.
02:19So Mr. Morris is interested in barbecue.
02:21This is minority leader Kelvin Morris.
02:24The vassal is open to visitors daily from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. until December 23rd, after
02:31which it will sail to Trinidad.
02:33Elizabeth Williams, TV6 News.
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