SILENT WORLD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 July 1939, Page 7

SILENT WORLD

* J—FARM FOR DEAF AND DUMB CLOSED. TWELVE YEARS' EXPERIMENT. After twelve years of experiment the Royal School for the Deaf and Dumb at Margate has closed its farm, for its pupils prefer the employment of the workshops, where they learn tailoring, printing, carpentry, engineering, and the rest. To town boys, to whom a breath of country life is paradise, this decision must seem strange indeed. But where is there a place where voice and hearing are more essential to enjoyment and success than in the country, with its great open fields and meadows? To be denied the sound of the song of birds, the sight of trees waving in breezes that we cannot hear, to be unable to address a horse in the words to which it answers, to be denied the ability to summon a dog by sound, or to call the cattle or direct the sheep by voice—all this makes country life as an occupation for the deaf and dumb a painful deprivation of the commonplace privileges enjoyed by the poorest among us. Country scenes, so lovely and so melodious to those of us who hear, must be a desolation of silence to the deaf and dumb. The workshop gives companionship, and those who work there can communicate one with another. It is very sad, but the choice of the Margate boys seems natural and inevitable, and there is the experience of a dozen years to suggest that they have chosen wisely.