TALKING IN CLASS.

Putaruru Press, Volume VIII, Issue 346, 10 July 1930, Page 5

TALKING IN CLASS.

AT A LONDON HOSPITAL. School That Children Love. I have just visited a children’s school where one of the golden rules is reversed (writes a representative of the London Sunday Express). In this school talking during classes is not discouraged—-it is welcomed joyfully.

The purpose of the school is to teach children to speak. It is held in St. Thomas’ Hospital, London, and the pupils are little boys and girls who are suffering from speech defects;

The school is held in one of the wards two afternoons a week, and the teachers are voluntary workers — elocutionists, actresses, and others—who understand the use and misuse of the voice.

The children—stammerers, lispers, some who are word-blind, others who cannot pass the stage of baby-talk—-come with their mothers to the school. They look forward to the classes, for each week brings them nearer the time when at last they will be able to talk like other hoys and girls and to join in their games without fear of being laughed at. When I looked in at the temporary school room a dozen girl tetachers were dealing with classes of four or five children, while Miss Elsie Fogerty, the honorary principal, and her assistant, Miss Joan Van Thai, moved about from one little group to another.

I have used the word “ school,” but there is nothing of the strict atmosphere of the ordinary school about it. The teachers and their pupils are friends, talking and playing together and; trying to forget that there is a lesson to learn.

The secret of the cure is to make the children lose their fear. In many cases nervousness is at the back of their little speed; troubles, and the children must be made happy and at ease.

Miss Forgerty led me to a comer where a teacher and a hoy of thirteen years were playing with large, carved wooden letters.

“ This hoy is word-blind,” said Miss Fogerty. “He cannot distinguish bne letter from another. Of course he eouldnt’ learn to read. That made him nervous and backward, and he began to Stammer.” The boy turned his back on Miss Fogerty, and she handed him a letter. After feeling it for a moment he was able to name it. Then she laid down some letters and asked him to name them. The letters were O-A-K. The boy looked at them, blushed, and then stammered out that he did not know.

Miss Fogerty helped him to pronounce the letters. Then the boy was told to relax, and lay stretched on his back.

Then we went to another part of the room, where a little boy and a little girl were blowing stamps across a window ledge. “ These are the most difficult cases • —children with organic defects,” said Miss Fogerty. Then she smiled, patted the little girl on the head, and asked her to count her fingers. “ One, two, three, four, five .” “ Six ” proved difficult. The little girl hesitated. “ Six ” came with an effort, then in a rush, “ seven-eight-nine-ten.” One of the most difficult cases of all is the word-deaf girl. Her hearing is perfectly clear, her brain is otherwise normal, but she cannot distinguish one word from another. Talk to her is merely unintelligible sound. Lisp cases by comparison are simple. They can usually be passed out as cured in four to six months.