Speaking Of Courage

'Speaking of Courage' will prove to be a source of encouragement to stammering children and their parents. This Canadian video focused on a young schoolgirl, Carolina, despondent at her friendlessness at school, and her equally frustrated parents. We follow her progress form speech therapy through to her triumphant oral presentation in front of her fellow pupils, albeit via some unnecessarily schmaltzy background music and lachrymose early scenes.

Crucially, speech therapists emphasise the importance of treating children early, preferable before the age of five, before the classic signs of secondary blockage (avoidance behaviour, averting the eyes) have become ingrained in the child's mind. It is also pointed out that parents should not hold themselves responsible for their children's stammering.

It was heartening to see the schoolteachers building a support framework around the stammering child, the adults realising the importance of allowing children to finish their sentences (how irritating it can be when others second-guess our every word!) and outlawing the cruel forms of imitation and ridicule which can sometimes blight stammerers' schooldays.

Interestingly, when the classmates of another stammering child, Lucas, are asked to describe him, they mention everything about his personality except his stammer. This should teach us that stammerers are not necessarily judged by their peer in terms of their dysfluency exclusively. Carolina's initial plight, depicted as someone imprisoned in a cell, may be seen as depressing by some but it should be seen rather as a metaphor for her feelings of loneliness rather than any reflection on the ostracision of stammerers in general.

When, at the end of the film, Carolina gives her address to the school she has won the respect of her peer and acquired a new self-esteem, although as stammerers are often aware, there is no miracle cure; instead stress is laid on her improved attitude of mind.

Dr Fred Murray makes perhaps the best point in the film when he tells Carolina that the best self-therapy is to tell the world, "I stutter, so what?".

Reviewed by Gabriel Hershman in the Winter 1994 issue of 'Speaking Out'.

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