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From: Jaan Pill
Date: 10/5/01
Time: 11:38:09 AM
Remote Name: 206.47.240.79
I think there's a consensus that ISA needs to do public education about stuttering, by providing accurate information. Much of ISA's activities -- such as its development of a website, its participation in ISAD events, its assistance in development of the Bill of Rights and Responsibilities, and in its upcoming participation in the International Year of the Child Who Stutters -- is focused on this.
At the same time, ISA takes care to ensure that whatever it conveys to the public is in line with the idea that ISA seeks to offer an impartial forum for the sharing of information about stuttering, rather than endorsing a particular philosophy about stuttering, or a particular approach (such as a specified treatment program) for dealing with it.
As noted in our overview about ISA, ISA is a strong supporter of the IPATS project (International Project on Attitudes Toward Stuttering) initiated by Ken St. Louis of the USA. The project seeks to find out if there are differences in how stuttering is perceived in countries around the world. It also seeks to develop a survey instrument that will help us to find out whether public education campaigns are in fact effective in changing public attitudes about stuttering. This is important, because we need to have ways to determine whether public education efforts actually work.
Ken St. Louis has suggested it may be more effective to educate the public about what to "do" when speaking with stutterers, rather than focusing on just providing general information. For example, it's important to let non-stutterers know that it's not helpful to try to complete a sentence for a person who stutters.
In a recent TV interview that I was involved with in Calgary, Canada, in my capacity as a co-founder of CAPS, the Canadian Association for People Who Stutter (an ISA member association), I was asked what I thought was really important to get across to the general public. I spoke about things such as not completing a person's sentence.
Ken St. Louis also has suggested that having stutterers share their individual "stories" is another highly effective way to provide valuable public education about stuttering. A recent book by him, Living with Stuttering, underlines the value of such stories.
ISA has also publicized educational efforts that can be conducted by school systems, such as the results-oriented, field-tested anti-bullying program developed by Marilyn Langevin at the Institute for Stuttering Treatment and Research, in Edmonton, Canada. This program is described elsewhere on this ISAD online conference.