Marion Saunders looks back with joy

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32660, 16 July 1971, Page 5

Marion Saunders looks back with joy

Destiny shaped Miss Marion Saunders’s career in speech therapy. From early childhood, a series of events focused her attention on the plight of the child who could not communicate. But she was in her thirties when their meaning became evident.

In her booklet, “Looking Back With Joy,” written as a supplement to the twenty-fifth anniversary Journal of the New Zealand Speech Therapists* Association and published a few days after her eightieth birthday. Miss Saunders shows the significance of her “milestones.” It is a record of personal experiences rather than a history of speech therapy—and she tells her story with wit and warmth. Marion Saunders was about nine when she gave her first “treatment.” Her father,: a doctor in Scotland, had a three-year-old patient who had made mo attempt to speak, though no hearing deficiency or palate defect could be found. Dr Saunders asked his own daughter to play with the little girl, to laugh and chatter with her—to help her break through her “shell.” The experiment, with the help of the child’s parents, was successful, and Miss Saunders never forgot it. Nor did she ever forget reading the Helen Keller story years later. IN CHRISTCHURCH Even after she had trained as a primary school teacher in Christchurch, New Zealand, “sign posts” kept leading Miss Saunders towards an opportunity to help children who could not make themselves understood. She had been a teacher at the ( School for the Deaf, Sumner,: for four years when she was' given its first special class for “hearing” children who needed help with speech. In 1930, she was asked to start a speech-training class! at the Normal School, and opened it in one room with, one pupil and one book. When she retired from the: Christchurch Speech Clinic* 18 years later, thousands of children had learned tol articulate clearly and scores of students had qualified as speech therapists and ex-: tended the work throughout New Zealand, under her, guidance. With the suitcase presented to her by colleagues at, the clinic when she retired. Miss Saunders set off for Aberdeen two months later. She worked there for two 1

years at a hospital clinic for country children. By 1951, she was back in New Zealand in charge of a speech i clinic for adults at the Christchurch Hospital, and: stayed there until 1954. Since then, she has done relieving 1 teaching and was attached to I the Clinic for Medical 1 Psychology in Andover' Street for several years. 1 ORIGINATOR Though Miss Saunders does ■ not claim to be the founder i of speech training in New s Zealand, she is certainly the i r originator of speech therapy 1 , as it is known today. She : rwas the first teacher to re- ■

/cognise the need to treat a , child as a whole entity rather ■ !than merely exercise its \ tongue. Others may have , ’ realised that speech defects were symptomatic of deeper , disturbances, but Miss Saund- ' ~ers put this new point . I of view into practice at her , ’clinics as far back as 1930. "She saw the value of a close, ; friendly, personal contact be- , ■ tween therapist and an in- j secure, withdrawn child. “In forming a new pattern , ' of relationship I did not try ' to 'do this or that’ but to ‘be’ | 1 the sort of person in whom a child could feel complete '■ trust,” Miss Saunders said i recently. Not all education authori- , ties understood her informal attitude to the work she ' loved, and there were fre- j quent patches of frustration. 1 But Marion Saunders’s irre- 1 pressible sense of humour al- 1

r ways saw her through diffl- , cult situations. There was an incident with i a school inspector, for in. > stance. A deeply inhibited, 1 shy boy, who had been cod- : tinually teased at home be- > cause of his poor speech, t played up badly when the inI spector called on the class. r “What a naughty boy,” the man said. Marion Saunders did not have the confidence in those days to say what i she really thought, and made ’ no comment. ’ “Inside myself I was cheer- : ing.” she said, “for that boy ' had broken out of his shell tat last. This happened ,30 • years ago, of course. Things are different now.” INFORMAL EDUCATION It sounds strange,; at first, to hear Miss Saunders say that her own lack of formal education was an ideal background for her work. But it fits, as her pattern of life emerges. She did not start primary school until she was 13, when her family had moved from Scotland to Cheviot. She had only been at Girton College, a girls’ private school, for a little more than a year when she was needed at home. But when she was in her late twenties and entered the Christchurch Teachers’ College, study came easily. Most of her early education came from her mother, a former teacher, and her father, a “horn teacher,” who encouraged wide reading and : talked a lot to their children. They gave her a background ; of human understanding more : valuable to a potential speech ‘ therapist than any academic studies available at that time. Miss Saunders's easy, in- : formal approach to teaching was extended to community problems and was like a ' breath of fresh air. Her ' throaty chuckle and her deep understanding of human frailties made her a popular mem- : ber of many Christchurch or- . ganisations, which claimed much of her time after retire- ! ment. She was president of the Christchurch branch of 1 the National Council of , Women for two years, and was made a life member of

the body. She was the first life member of the New Zealand Speech Therapists’ Asso- ; ciation, an honour in recognition, of outstanding service. A foundation member of the Christchurch branch of the League for the Hard of Hearing, Miss Saunders was an active supporter of the Play Centres’ Association, the Workers’ Education Association, the New Education Fellowship, the Howard League for Penal Reform, and the ’ New Zealand Association of Psychotherapists. Marion Saunders’s booklet of memoirs, edited by Miss | Grace Gane (one of her stui dents) and printed by the i Raven Press, is another of her “milestones.” One feels destiny has still more in store for her. “You know, in all my years in speech therapy I never met an autistic child,” she I said. “I hope, even yet, to talk to one to see if, by chance, I could get through to it.”

Until one comes her way. Miss Saunders is waiting for spring to reach the garden of the Sumner home she shares with her sister.