I am deaf!

When I was five, I attended Scarcliffe Primary School, I did not make good progress with my school work and was considered to be backward, what to-day would mean that I had learning difficulties. One day a new headmistress arrived and after observing me in class must have noticed that I did not respond to any loud noises made in the classroom and that I did not seem to know when the teacher was talking to the class; she was certain that I was deaf.

I was eight when it was confirmed that I was partially deaf and thus became a pupil at the Maud Maxfield School for the Deaf in Sheffield, Yorkshire. At this school, I was taught to lip-read and was given some speech training as it was called in those days. I can remember standing in front of a large mirror learning how to say individual letter sounds, syllables and eventually to pronounce complete words. Lip-reading, a communication skill where you watch the lips of the person you are talking to, a method that I used along with the bulky and uncomfortable hearing aid that I had to wear, so much different to the digital hearing aids that I wear to-day. The teachers spoke slowly and clearly which enabled me to hear and understand what they were saying. There was no cheating like there was when I was at Scarcliffe Primary School where I would copy off my friends because I did not know what I had to do and because of my deafness I could not follow the lessons but I enjoyed the lessons at my new school.

There has always been a certain stigma surrounding people who are deaf, not so much today but  more so in the old days. If someone is deaf, people tended to think that they were slow or backward but this was not the case as the only problem that the deaf person had was that they could not hear so could not always understand speech. I have heard people when in the presence of a deaf person start to speak louder or even shout because they believed that if they did this, the deaf person would be able to hear them better, this can be so humiliating and could cause anguish. This has happened to me many times especially when I was a little girl. There was one lady who lived in the village who would come very near to me and practically shout down my ear! Why she did not burst my eardrums, I will never know.  When I turn the volume down on my hearing aid the person talking to me would presume that I have turned my hearing aid up because I could not hear them so they would start again, talking much louder!