The Chicken and the Alligators

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Re: Thank you for helpful ideas!

From:
Date: 10/10/01
Time: 9:21:51 AM
Remote Name: 24.4.254.202

Comments

Hello Joseph,

Sorry to take this long to answer your questions, but life has been frantic here is Dallas.

Anyway, here are my anwers:

1. What is toastmasters?

Toastmasters is a public speaking organization designed to help people improve their public speaking and leadership skills. We have about 180,000 members worldwide, but I don't see any clubs in Cameroon. According to the Toastmaster web site there are Toastmasters clubs in Africa in Botswana, Mauritius, Cote D'Ivoire, Namibia, Egypt, South Africa, Ethiopia, Swaziland, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and Malawi. You can see more about Toastmasters at www.toastmasters.org .

2. Was the national Humorous speech contest of 1996 limited only to stutterers...?

Oh no! Toastmasters is composed of 99% fluent people (just like the standard population ratio), but more and more people who stutter are finding it very useful and a LOT of fun! Through my efforts, and the efforts of lots of other people who stutter, Toastmasters is extremely well aware of the National Stuttering Association and other organizations for people who stutter.

... or how did it come about that you performed better than fluent speakers?

Ha, ha! I'm just good I guess! <smile> No seriously, I stutter just like I do all the time when I give Toastmaster speeches. I don't use any tricks to improve my fluency or try to impress anyone with my fluency. (I couldn't even if I tried!) Communication and fluency are two entirely different concepts, though admittedly it takes some - but far from perfect - fluency - to be able to communicate well. My contest speech involved a funny story about when my cousin and I were growing up and apparently the judges - some of the finest speakers in the entire world - thought I did the best job communicating that story. I worked long and hard on that speech, giving it probably over 100 times in the course of preparing for that contest, and honestly I was dumbfounded when they named me the winner! The other speakers were wonderful! I just relaxed and had fun giving it. It all goes to show that people REALLY don't care if you stutter, but the DO care if you can communicate. Amazing, isn't it?

3. What is required of one to attend the level of DTM?

LOTS of things. You have to give a BUNCH of different speeches on all kinds of topics in all kinds of settings, participate in Toastmaster leadership roles, and do several things in the area of community service. It took me eleven years to get my Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM) rank, and less than 1% of all Toastmasters ever achieve it. Current I believe I am the only member of the National Stuttering Association who is a DTM in Toastmasters, but several others are closing in on it!

The scariest thing for me to do was do a Youth Leadership program, teach an eight week course in public speaking for teenagers in the community. I was scared to death that the kids (age 10 through 19) would laugh at my speech, but it turned out that they could have cared less about my stuttering as long as I took the time to work with them - and love them. I've given four Youth Leadership courses so far and that is one of the most fun things I've done in Toastmasters.

4 Do you think that therapy is indispensable as a 'CURE' to stuttering? What of people who have never had any form of therapy in their lives?

Good therapy helps, no doubt about it. But bad therapy can hurt too. And no therapy at all is not necessarily bad depending on each individual. Get good books. Contact the National Stuttering Association or the Stuttering Foundation of America for a wealth of good books on stuttering therapy. Also check out LOTS of good material on Judy Kuster's Stuttering Home Page. (Judy is the wonderful lady running this on-line conference.)

Regarding a "cure," I don't think that is possible in our lifetime. But that isn't bad news. Get on with your life and HELP people. Get involved with THEIR problems. People need help everywhere (especially these days!), so become a part of someone else's solution and don't get hung up in your own problems. I know that's easier said than done, but that's the key to recovering from stuttering.

5. You teach your children that any differences they see in people are' OKAY' and that they should not judge or laugh at others.

Yes, that is correct.

Do you really believe that stuttering persons are OKAY like other beings? Don't you think that there is something lacking in us that makes us 'UNOKAY'?

No. I don't believe that for a minute. Some of the most wonderful people in the world stutter. I could make a list, but it would be far too long for this already long response. The key is to become involved with helping OTHER people with improving THEIR lives. And whether or not you stutter has nothing whatsoever to do with your ability to do that.

One key element in all this is to learn to deal with your STRENGTHS, not concentrate on trying to fix your perceived weaknesses. People honestly don't care if we stutter or not, just as long as we help THEM with their problems. All said and done, that's the key to successful living.

6. You said again something that looks interesting to me. You said ' I believe stuttering is not bad, people who stutter have a right to be treated with some respect - MY OWN IDEA ABOUT THAT. To me those are just general principles that are laid down and are supposed to but are never respected. For example this incidence happened to our country of late. One of the members of our association SCAC got her fiancee who loved her very much. She is a stutterer and the parents of the boy refused their son from getting married to this lady because she is a stutterer on the pretext that she was to transmit the stuttering virus to the would- be-children. The whole affair ended there because here your parents must accept the lady to whom You are to get married to . In this case what can you say that her rights were respected? We have raised the issue with the local Human Rights organisation and nothing has been yet.

No doubt those horrible things happen, and some people just don't understand all they should. We see every day extremely unfair discrimination of Islamic people from the Middle East by ignorant people right here in the US. And that breaks my heart. But the ultimate solution is education and love, and those take lots of time. Legal actions help, but it's hard to FORCE people not to hate people they don't understand. Discrimination is an ugly fact of life, and stuttering is only one of the many forms it may take. But let's you and I take the high road and fight it with education, love, patience, understanding, and perserverence. As the black people here in the US sing, "We shall overcome... some day." The sun will shine tomorrow if we all pull together.

............

Joseph, thank you for your interest in this paper and in the ISAD conference. If you want discuss any of this further, please feel free to email me directly at russhicks@mail.com. If you have access to the web, my home page is www.geocities.com/russhicks313.

Be well!

Russ


Last changed: September 12, 2005