The skill of beautiful speaking is the most beautiful picture for each of us

Conversation with Vesna Keramichievska, MA, speech therapist

Speech is a science of speech. This is the interpretation that is usually given by dictionaries of older origin, but today speech therapy as a science is applied wherever problems arise in oral expression in anyone who shows any speech disadvantages.

How many people in our daily lives know the true interpretation of the word speech therapist? And how many of all those who know the interpretation are truly directed to the meaning of a very serious profession of coconut that is on the speech therapist?
To clarify this truly important issue, my interlocutor is one of the few experts in this area in Macedonia, which dedicated all its working life to the not -so -recognized science in our country, Vesna Keramichievska, but who manages to fully form its place on the scale of the necessary sciences.
She is in education a graduate philologist at the Department of Romanian Philology, with Italian language under the University « Ss. Cyril and Methodius » in Skopje. But after a kind of family determination in 1990, she graduated from the Faculty of Special Education in Belgrade, Department of Logopedia, and is fully committed to everything that relates to speech activity, as a very important activity, not only in the development of children, but in the givinger speech as one of the feature of each other. I have highlighted « family heritage » above because I think it is inevitable the fact that her father prof. Dr. Slavco Kereramichievski is the right promoter and one of the founders of the speech therapy in Macedonia and beyond by the SANU (Serbian Academy of Sciences). He is a double doctor of science, one doctorate is in the field of Macedonian phonetics, and the second in the field of phonopedia (voice science), and completed his working life as a full professor at the Faculty of Specialities in Belgrade, for whose needs he wrote the textbooks « General » and « General » and « General Speech ». The second inspiration for her commitment is her mother Ljubica Keramichievska, Master and Decade Practitioner -Logoped.
As a longtime speech therapist, she works at the Special Primary School « Dr. Zlatan Sremec » in Skopje, where she will also experience her administrative pension, leaving behind generations and generations of children already ready to devote themselves to professions that will attract them to life. But Vesna continues to work and help all those who seek that expert help. Why? It is precisely because of the lack of professional staff in this area and precisely because of the constant marginalization of the speech therapy, which in Macedonia, at least the experience showed it, became truly necessary.

To get to the essence of our conversation, I would first ask our readers to explain our multiethnic and multicultural community, where by the force of historical events, we have always been and are still a multi -dimensional area in which the languages ​​of all the people are present in it. What is crucial that such communities can cause problems, which over time become topics of hearings in many scientific spheres, but mostly in special education and loggedia?
– In my opinion, the multinational, multiethnic, multicultural composition of the population in our country is a real wealth, which in itself does not contain issue that would be subject to the study and practice of speech therapy. As a potential problem in our area I see the stigmatization of deviations from what is considered typical, and is imposed by our mentality. People in this area had been quite solid coexistence for decades, especially in the time of SFRY. That way we were raised and thus worked until the transition, which in itself brought a lot of difficulties and changes in the way of functioning and living.

According to your personal knowledge, where has a key mistake in relation to the proper and appropriate treatment for the importance of speech therapy in our environment, ie in our country?
-At the essence of man, as a bio-social social being, communication lies. It is the subject of the study and practice of speech therapy. This and interdisciplinary science that covers all the segments of which the human personality consists.
The staff of this profile after World War II, for decades, has been formed in this area in Belgrade and Zagreb, later in Ljubljana and Sarajevo. A wise man once wrote that most of the energy of the speech therapists will be wasted to prove the need to fasten them more than the practice itself.
Slowly but surely the institutions and institutions that were dealt with in the essence were dealt with diverse developmental deviations, which were differently defined and not treated with medication. These are states that are caused by different aetiology, leaving consequences for the ability to communicate and function personality, speech, vision, hearing, voice, behavioral disorders.
The speech therapy deals with detection, correction, habilitation and rehabilitation of speech-language pathology.
The dream of my late father was precisely the creation of an educational institution in our country to create staff. It succeeded with a lot of effort, so that the UKIM-Skopje special education group at the Faculty of Philosophy was formed. However, these sciences require more medical than an educational approach. Staff existed and still exists in small specialized institutions, which cannot even meet the needs.

Your long-term practical work at the PU « Dr. Zlatan Sremec » has undeniably the expected results. But I believe that the public will also be interested in, whether within our philological/special education studies have created opportunities for opening a special interdisciplinary department for the preparation of this true professional and for us always necessary staff?
– I was honored and lucky to « roast » the craft where I had the most challenges because of the various pathologies I met there. Although with my postgraduate status and experience I had the opportunity to deal with science, I still chose practical action, precisely because of the lack of speech therapy.
I have to address the essential problems imposed by systemic changes in society. The longer the absence of parents, lifestyle and nutrition inevitably increased the number of people with various disabilities. The number of early children’s psychoses is drastically increasing, such as autism. This is where the problem of many linguistics lies. Children master a foreign language by applying modern electronic means, before mastering the morphology of the language in which they need to be socialized.
Fortunately, at UKIM at the Faculty of Medicine two years ago studies of speech therapy were formed, which will have appropriate staff after a while. If an institutional connection is made to support these persons, the situation will change drastically for the better. With this, I wish future colleagues successful.

Biljana Z. Biljanovska