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Helen Keller: Teachers
built 276 days ago
News of Laura Bridgman ignited hope—she had been socialized into a semblance of personhood, while Helen remained a small savage—and hope led, eventually, to Alexander Graham Bell. By then, the invention of the telephone was well behind him, and he was tenaciously committed to teaching the deaf to speak intelligibly. His wife was deaf; his mother had been deaf. When the six-year-old Helen was brought to him, he took her on his lap and instantly calmed her by letting her feel the vibrations of his pocket watch as it struck the hour. Her responsiveness did not register in her face; he described it as “chillingly empty.” But he judged her educable, and advised her father to apply to Michael Anagnos, the director of the Perkins Institution, for a teacher to be sent to Tuscumbia.
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Anne’s first step was to remove Helen from the family home and move herself and the young girl into a smaller building next door that Helen’s parents had lived in when she was born. Anne pushed Helen in a stroller for hours before finally taking her into the house, convincing the child she was far away from her family and home, and forcing her to rely on her teacher for everything. Then Anne Sullivan set to work to break through the silence.
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Until she was 10 years old, Keller could talk only with sign language. She decided she would learn to speak and took lessons from a teacher of the deaf in 1890. Helen learned to speak well enough to go to school in 1898 and later to college, in 1900. Helen graduated from Radcliffe College with honors in 1904. Ms. Sullivan stayed with her through these years, working hard to help Helen to understand the lessons at school.
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Helen immediately asked Anne for the name of the pump to be spelt on her hand and then the name of the trellis. All the way back to the house Helen learned the name of everything she touched and ... asked for Anne’s name. Anne spelled the name “Teacher” on Helen’s hand. Within the next few hours Helen learnt the spelling of thirty new words.
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Her parents traveled to Baltimore with Helen to visit a special doctor. He told them about Alexander Graham Bell who had invented the telephone. Bell had become very interested in how to teach deaf children. He recommended the Kellers get in touch with the director of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind to ask for a teacher. The director recommended Anne Sullivan.
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With the help of Alexander Graham Bell, the Kellers hired Anne Mansfield Sullivan (1866-1936) to teach the seven-year-old Helen how to communicate. "The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher came to me," Keller later wrote.
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