Olga Ivanovna Skorokhodova

Born July 11 (24), 1914, in the village of Belozerka, in what is now Kherson Oblast. Soviet defectologist, educator, and writer. Candidate of pedagogical sciences (in psychology, 1961).

Skorokhodova suffered from meningitis at age five, after which she lost her vision and later her hearing. From 1925 to 1941 she attended a general-education program at a secondary school level at the Kharkov School and Clinic for Blind and Deaf-Mute Children. During this period speech sounds were restored to her. Skorokhodova continued her education in Moscow from 1944 to 1948 under the direction of the professor I. A. Sokolianskii. In 1948 she became a research worker at the Scientific Research Insitute of Defectology of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR (until 1965, the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR).

Skorokhodova wrote the monographs How I Perceive the World Around Me (1947, awarded the first K. D. Ushinskii Prize), How I Perceive and Imagine the World Around Me (1954, awarded the second K. D. Ushinskii Prize, translated into many foreign languages), and How I Perceive, Imagine, and Understand the World Around Me (1972, First Prize of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR).

Skorokhodova’s research on the development, upbringing, and education of blind and deaf-mute children is important in understanding the mental development of an individual suffering from blindness and deaf-mutism. Skorokhodova is active in public and educational affairs; she lectures and writes articles in journals for the blind and deaf.

Skorokhodova has been awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.