My name is Peter Matthew Schofield. I was born on the 14th of December 1986. My early life was uneventful, apart from being rushed to hospital one morning, aged one and a half, with viral meningitis. I pulled through, with no after-effects, although it hung in the balance for a while. Then, aged five, my life changed. I was diagnosed with a slight progressive sensory-neural hearing loss. This is when there is a problem with the part of the ear that sends nerve signals to the brain about the sounds. Progressive also means that it will only ever get worse. I was given hearing aids, and I coped all the way through primary school, with a radio aid and a support assistant. When it came to making the choice of secondary school, my parents wanted me to go to The Mary Hare Grammar School for the deaf in Newbury, Berkshire. As it was a residential boarding school, I didn't like the idea at first, but after I had visited the school, I couldn't wait to start. There was, however, one small obstacle. My LEA (Local Education Authority) refused to pay the 20,600 per year fees. My parents prepared a case outlining how Mary Hare was the best place for my education, and how the LEA could not provide anything anywhere near satisfactory, and we took them to the SEN (Special Educational Needs) Tribunal. The SEN Tribunal is an independent panel of three people who read the case provided by the child's parents, and the one provided by the LEA and then hold a Hearing, which is a meeting among the parents, the LEA, and the panel. The panel then decide who is right, and which school the child goes to. We had the worst tribunal in the entire history of SEN Tribunals, the panel were totally biased in favor of the the LEA. Needless to say, we lost. I had to go to the local school. My parents refused to send me there, so I spent a year having lessons at home with my mum (a qualified Modern Languages teacher) and my Gran (a qualified English teacher), while my parents took the LEA to the High Court. Shortly before the High court hearing, the LEA pulled out and agreed to let us have another SEN Tribunal. We jumped at the chance and prepared an excellent case. Once again, we lost. The LEA refused to name Mary Hare, although we won every other point that we challenged them on. The Tribunal agreed that the school the LEA first named was not appropriate, so they had to name a different one. The result was that I would have a twenty minute taxi ride to and from school each day. Mum and Dad still disagreed, but we could not afford for me to stay at home any longer, so I had to go. All through the proceedings, Mum had been writing letters to everyone she could think of, and about half-way through my first term at 'real' school, we had a reply. Esther Rantzen was very concerned at the lack of justice we had received, and would we mind her making a documentary about our case? About a week later, we went to Mary Hare and met up with a film crew. We spent the day filming around the school, and went home, to find a message from Harrods owner Mohammad Al Fayed, requesting that we went to Harrods on the Wednesday. The TV company provided a taxi, as Dad was in Argentina on business, and Mum could not face driving to London. When we got there, we were taken to a cafe, where we met up with Fiona, the director who had made the documentary on the Monday. She told us that we were there for a special meeting. When the time came, we were escorted to a private area of the shop, and we came face-to-face with the man himself. He had a chat with us, and he told us that he had a deaf son who was at Mary Hare. Then he said that he would pay my school fees. It was such a shock that I did not understand what he was saying at first, but when Fiona repeated it for me, I was so happy that words would fail to describe it. Mum was in tears, and when she thanked him, Mr Al Fayed said that all that mattered was my being happy. We later found out that it was Esther who had told him about me, and he had offered to pay for me. We met Esther for the first time that Saturday, and she was lovely. We got a tour of the TV Studio, and then we had to do some more filming. I am now in my final year at Mary Hare, having passed all my GCSEs and I am taking Chemistry, Physics and ICT for A-Levels.
As well as deafness, I also suffer from developmental Dyspraxia, which is a co-ordination and motor control disorder, that also causes me to be very disorganized and have no concept of either time or danger. I am also very short in height (4' 10") and I am unable to put on weight, regardless of what I eat, which isn't very much anyway. My physical fitness has never been very good, but I am seriously improving that now. I am extremely flexible with my body and I am double-jointed all over, so I am widely considered as quite a strange character. I have a few strange abilities, including my extreme flexibility, I can see in the dark fairly well, well enough to get around. I am very aware of being watched, and I am quite good at hearing things that I'm not supposed to hear. Not all of my abilities are good all of the time, though. One ability that used to cause me a lot of problems, although it is only recently that I realized that I had that ability, and that it was that causing the problems, is Animal Empathy. This, in it's pure form, allows you to feel the emotions of animals around you. unfortunately, because I never realized I had this ability, I never learnt to control it, so now, it is very weak. This means I can only feel very powerful emotions (such as anger, terror, excitement and confusion) and those of very young animals. It also seems to work better with wild animals. The most major problem it caused was on my 11th birthday. I went to the cinema to see the live action version of '101 Dalmatians'. Knowing what I know now, I can see that it was a recipe for disaster. I was young and excitable, I had no control over my empathy, and there were at least fifty young and very excited puppies on the screen at once. At that age, I had only just gained complete control over my own emotions. As you can probably imagine, it caused me an emotional overload, and I spent the whole evening being sick and nursing a splitting migraine. After that incident, I avoided the cinema for six years. It was only this year that I started going to the cinema again. My grandparents took me to see 'Two Brothers'. When I came out, I finally understood the cause of my previous problem with the cinema. Once again, I felt the emotions of the animals in the film, but I was older and I had perfect control of my own emotions, there were never more than three animals on the screen at once. Still, it was a very emotional experience for me. I have never told any of my family about this ability, as I doubt they will approve. I believe this ability to partly be the reason why, despite being an adult, I still enjoy watching The Lion King. I feel that I can identify with some of the characters, especially Simba and Nala, and even more so with their younger forms. I still shudder when Scar talks about killing Simba, and during the song 'My Lullaby' in The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride. ('The sound of Simba's dying gasp - His daughter squealing in my grasp - His lioness's mournful cry - That's my lullaby.') This is partly because I believe harming a child is an unforgivable crime. And, Scar was not talking about killing any child, he was planning to kill his own nephew. I just can't understand that cold-blooded and callous attitude, even as an amateur psychologist. Also, the films are so good, that I get the 'extra' emotional aspect of the characters, through my Animal Empathy, even though they are not real. Mum just says I'm sensitive, though. I used to have a problem controlling my temper, but I am now much better at controlling it, through the use of a variety of techniques including chanting under my breath, and breathing excercises. Nowadays, there is very little that will cause me to lose control, although two things that make me really mad are animal cruelty and child cruelty.