| |
The idea
of a portable, battery operated listening
training machine was not a new one. The Canadian
engineer who worked with Dr. Tomatis in the
early 1980’s in the development of a new generation
of Electronic Ears was already talking at
that time about a ‘mini machine’. I remember
one day he came up with a small prototype.
While the sound quality was identical to the
Electronic Ear, we were looking at it with
a mixture of skepticism, disbelief and, I
remember, a certain dose of disappointment.
We were used to sturdy, expensive, ‘solid’
equipment. It was the era of huge hi-fi systems
that took the better part of a wall unit.
We were stuck in the mindset of ‘the bigger
the better’. How would such a small device
do the extraordinary work of the Electronic
Ear Impossible! We never gave the mini machine
a chance and it stayed collecting dust on
the shelves of the engineer’s lab.
At about the same time, the goal of the team
in charge of developing the Tomatis Method
in Canada was to introduce it in the public
education system. It made perfect sense that
this work should be available at schools,
where children who need it spend the better
part of the day. My role was to teach the
teachers how to implement listening training
programs in the class and, in particular,
how to operate the Electronic Ear. From that
perspective, I realized how many adults felt
intimidated, uncomfortable, or even threatened
by machines. This did not surprise me at all
because I myself had a very hard time learning
to deal with technical matters. The situation
was worse for the teachers because they had
to use the equipment in the presence of their
students. A young student correcting the teacher
or showing her how to set the apparatus was
a pretty common sight
This project of school
listening training programs in Canada met
with many road blocks such as lack of funding,
insufficient outcome research or difficulty
fitting the time for listening training
in the school day schedule. After 5 years
of trying, the project was discontinued.
Despite this setback,
I am still totally convinced that listening
trainings in the educational system is the
way of the future. Every time I have the
opportunity to give a presentation in a
school, or to a group of teachers, I insist
that, if I had my way, I would make listening
training part of the curriculum. Ideally,
a standard listening program of 40 or 50
hours should be given to all children in
kindergarten in order to insure the best
possible sound discrimination and phonological
awareness as well as the best voice quality,
clarity of speech and body image before
they start learning to read. But, based
on my experience with school listening training
programs, I felt that for this to happen,
the training equipment had to be adapted
to the reality of the school environment.
This means that it should be portable (light
weight and battery run) and easy to operate.
In 1994, during a conversation with the
engineer on the need for a small and simplified
machine for educational use, he reminded
me of the prototype he had buil<strong>t</strong>
years before that we had chosen to ignore.
I asked him to dig it out to have a second
look but it was nowhere to be found. For
him, this loss didn’t matter because the
technology had evolved so much since then
that the whole thing needed to be re-designed
anyway. With the advent of software technology,
the end product ought to be even smaller,
lighter and easier to use than his old ‘mini
machine’. A few months later, the engineer
had come up with a prototype of the ‘little
machine’ or the ‘listening trainer’ which
was to become the LiFT.
nable to speak intelligibly.
During a visit home to Southern France I
brought a prototype with me and tried it
on him. He quickly learned to use it on
his own and enjoyed listening to the music
of Mozart and Gregorian chant. His speech
was getting clearer as long as he was doing
his listening training daily. I decided
to leave him the unit with the instruction
to continue his listening one hour a day
and, from time to time, some reading out
loud, or some singing with the microphone
on. (The headset was equipped with an attachedmicrophone
to facilitate audio vocal work.) My father
found reading out loud too tiring and never
warmed up to singing but decided instead
to recite prayers as his microphonework.
Years later his paralysis continued to disable
him but, thanks to the LiFT that he was
using one hour a day, we continued to talk
over the phone every week until his last
few months of his life.
|
|
