AND THE SILENT WORLD

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 253, 24 October 1936, Page 1 (Supplement)

AND THE SILENT WORLD

ißy MONA j j TRACY i

The Fi rst, Smal I Steps orb arc -

BARBARA'S earliest years were passed in a strange world. It was a silent world into which no sound came. The song of the wind in the trees, the chime of running water, the chant of birds at dawn — these ordinary joys of New Zealand childhood small Barbara had never known. Nor had she ever heard magical music coming from over the air nor her mother's crooning of those soft, sweet lullabies which mothers delight in singing. She bad been deaf from babyhood. Hers, however, was a bright little mind. While she was yet a tiny thing she had noticed that by simply moving their lips people were able to make others do those things which they desired should be done. Her tliother, for instance, had only to move her lips at Rex, the wire-haired terrier, and Rex would leap down apologetically from the chair on which he had been comfortably sleeping and slink into a corner with his tail between liis legs. " By this Barbara understood that it was wrong of Rex to sit on the clean, chintz chair covers. But how did her mother manage to make Rex, a mere dog, understand?

The sympathy of the world goes out to the blind. Even the most unimaginative person is able to grasp the tragedy of a world of perpetual darkness, but few realise the tragedy of a silent world; a world in which is unknown any form of soundmusic, speech, sounds of the bush and stream —these belong to another life. Deafness, being something which cannot actually be seen, seldom inspires pity. When thoughtless people speak of other folk being "deaf and dumb" it is because they cannot realise that, unless properly taught, those who are afflicted with deafness are dumb only because they have never heard a single sound they can imitate. Our story deals with the brightness that may be introduced into such lives and of the wonderful work that is being done for the deaf at the Summer School. Ed.

noticed, too, that the children with whom she sometimes played would keep moving their lips, apparently in order to convey thoughts to one another. Barbara tried moving hers, but, to her disgust, nobody took any notice of her. By the time that she was six years old she knew that, in some mysterious way. she was different from other children; that, in some manner, she was utterly cut off from sharing in the joys of ordinary childhood. To Barbara, a friendly, loving little soul, this ■ meant grief unspeakable; grief all the more poignant, in that it could not be shared-. Why should all other children be like one another and only she the "different" one? She became shy and awkward. She dreaded meeting other children. When their mothers brought them to her parents' house she would creep away and hide; and sometimes, from her hidey-liouse, up in the big macrocarpa tree, she would peep down, often with tears in her brown eyes, on those other children running merrily about and behaving as thought the world was theirs. Barbara could not believe that any part

of the world was for her; it was just a great, big, inexplicable place in which she felt a forlorn stranger. Then the wonderful thing happened — although at first it did not seem so very wonderful, since it meant parting from her mother and father. She was sent as a boarder to a school for the deaf —a great, welcoming, red-brick 4

building whose windows looked out on smooth lawns and playing fields; on gay flower beds; and on tall trees grouped against a background of softlyrounded green hills. The teachers were welcoming, too; from their eyes, small, sensitive Barbara knew they must be kind. And what happy faces the children had! She was drawn to her fellow boarders from the beginning, to the little children who smiled, to the big girls who mothered the tiny girls; who didn't make mouths at her, but wlio, when they wished her to go here or there, or to do this or that, simply pushed her gently about. And when, at night, a jolly-faced matron (though, of course, Barbara did not know that she was a matron) took her to a dormitory with a frieze showing little folk at work and at play; with a shining floor along- which was laid a strip of gay carpet; and with thin rows of little beds, brightly covered in green and pink and with, oh, joy! —a doll or a teddy bear slumbering gently against each pillow—she could have wept from sheer joy.

Here, at last, was a world in which people understood. At last Barbara felt that she really "belonged" somewhere. Her instinct told her that these other children were as she was. They had known some tragical thing which she, in a dim way, was already beginning to know.

Barbara went to "school" next morning, the school behijj an upstairs room in the friendly, red-brick building. No time is ever wasted by those who teach the deaf; they know, all too well, the handicap under which the deaf child labours, and that its education must, as a matter of course, take much longer than that of the normal youngster. And so Barbara was led into a bright little room, gay with pictures, .with tiny desks dotted about it, with slates and blackboards. Here she was given her first lesson in making the sounds that her own pink little: ears would never hear.

There were two teachers for this "baby" class, a man and a girl. Gently, ever so gently, they taught Barbara to feel the muscles of their throats, while they said: "Aa-aa-aa-h. . . ." They said it patiently, over and over agiin. They put their fingers on her litlte throat and encouraged her to say it; and by and by, touching their throats, and then her own, her sensitive little fingers learned to know how the thi-oat muscles moved in saying "Aa-aa-aa-h." She was taught how to write down the sound on her slate. After three or four days Barbara knew that when her throat muscles moved in a certain way and that when she wrote down the movement on her slate she was doing something which pleased her teachers.

They taught her to make other sounds, too—all the vowels, one after another. Then they showed her how

to make her first consonant—"p." Tliey did this by pretending to blow a feather away from the mouth. Later they would make her realise the difference between "p" and the liarder-sounding "b"; but this was, as yet, in the future. And so work went on, day after day, in the little folks' classroom, Barbara learning new things each morning along with the other small people. Gradually she learned to string vowels and consonants together in simple words—"boot," for instance. Very soon she was able to understand what a boot was; there was a picture of one on the wall, and the teachers wore boots, and so did her class-mates. She repeated the word many times: "Boot, boot, boot," feeling her lips at first, then gaining confidence and saying it without any aid whatever. She delighted in being able to write it down—Boot; There were, of course, other words with which, for the present, she was not to have such good fortune. For instance, it was necessary that she should learn some simple adjectives. The word "fat" came into her lessons, with the illustration on the wall

that of a very fat man. Barbara did not know he was a "man"; but she soon learned to call him a "fat." It was happy work to the little, expanding soul which had for the six charming years of babyhood been shut out utterly from the thought and eelf-expression of normal children. The hours of learning seemed all too short . . . how pathetically eager for knowledge are the deaf! Then there were playtimes, in which games and dancing; happy mealtimes, with food brought, piping hot, from the great kitchen (now, that was a friendly room!) and set on flower-decked tables; bedtimes, with a little fun; and then sleep cuddled up to whichever doll one loved best. And holidays now were becoming matters for enjoyment. How Barbara's mother .laughed (and wept, too!) when Barbara, puffing the word from pursed lips, and using the only term she was able to apply to him, described her own father as a "fat"! The house from which Barbara had sometimes fled, to weep out her small, lonely heart in the heights of the macrocarpa tree, was a merry place at last. (To be continued.)