Imagine, just for a moment, that you speak – and nobody hears what you’re saying.
It’s a common problem. Travelers, moving from experience to experience in a foreign land without the benefit of the local language. Students, moving from class to class while their educators, often experts in their field expressly rewarded for possessing more information than anyone around them, assume the kids have nothing to say worth hearing. And in emerging social media outlets like Twitter, tools perfectly designed for those who wish to speak but abysmal for listening, it is possible for anybody’s voice to be lost in the din.
It seems there are at least a few major reasons why one’s voice might not be heard – important considerations if you seek to be heard yourself:
- What language do you use? We have such amazing access today to the voices of the world, and with just the click of a few keys we are able to chose among millions which we let through. And with translating tools now so common (with the exception of Icelandic ), I do not refer here to voices speaking in a tongue other than yours. Rather, I mean the words you use to express your thoughts. Take for example, @redheadwriting – a prolific Twitter contributor, and an exceptionally talented and frequently provocative writer, but one whose profane commentary, like someone screaming in your ear for an extended time, both puts her voice above the fray and yet leads at least some to stop listening.
- What message do you send? Certainly it is easier to be heard if you give people what they seek and the honest and personal voice finds a more sympathetic ear, but many times these two conflict. Most often great art, great writing happens when its creator transfers their vision into a work without a care as to how it may be received.
- Which medium do you chose? Standing above the chaos with a howling wind at your back will certainly help your voice carry far and wide – but unpopulated mountaintops are not known for their massive audiences either.
For some, however, despite any possible planning it is often impossible to be heard. The core mission of Lost In The Feed is to help those at risk of losing their voices to the noise of the world know that at least someone stands quietly listening, but today we had an opportunity to take our mission quite literally.
Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet was born in Philadelphia in 1787. Educated at Yale, by all accounts Gallaudet was destined for the ordinary life of a lawyer; that is until he met Alice Cogswell in 1814. Alice was only 9, and as a result of cerebra-spinal meningitis at age 2, lost her ability to hear and to speak. With Alice as inspiration, Gallaudet founded the first school in the United States dedicated to teaching students described at the time as “deaf and mute”, the American School for the Deaf (ASD) in Hartford, Connecticut. For nearly 200 years, the school has been committed to teaching its students how to communicate effectively – how to be heard in the feed, and to teaching other teachers in the field. The ASD was among the first to develop new tools, new methods and resources to address their unique needs, and many of these original books reside today in the school’s museum. In honor of those who dedicated their energy and resources to goals so similar to ours, it is our distinct pleasure to quietly support the ASD today.