Teaching Helen Keller
Teaching Helen Keller
As you might have already guessed, I am enthralled by Helen Keller’s The Story of My Life. I am especially fascinated by Miss Anne Sullivan’s letters, in which she touches upon her methods of teaching the little deaf-blind girl. They immediately reminded me of Charlotte Mason, of which I have also been reading a great deal. The following are assorted excerpts gathered from Miss Sullivan’s official reports and her correspondence with confidante Mrs. Hopkins.
“I begin to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas, if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less showily. Let him go and come freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself, instead of sitting indoors at a little round table, while a sweet-voiced teacher suggests that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks, or make a rainbow our of strips of coloured paper, or plant straw trees in bead flower-pots. Such teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of, before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experiences.... Since I have abandoned the idea of regular lessons, I find that Helen learns much faster. I am convinced that the time spent by the teacher in digging out of the child what she has put into him, for the sake of satisfying herself that it has taken root, is so much time thrown away. It’s much better, I think, to assume that the child is doing his part, and that the seed you have sown will bear fruit in due time. It’s only fair to the child, anyhow, and it saves you much unnecessary trouble.” (May 8, 1887)
“[Helen] has now reached the question stage of her development. It is “what?” “why?” “when?” especially “why?” all day long, and as her intelligence grows her inquiries become more insistent. I remember how unbearable I used to find the inquisitiveness of my friends’ children, but I know now that these questions indicate the child’s growing interest in the cause of things. The “why?” is the door through which he enters the world of reason and reflection.” (July 31, 1887)
“... I am teaching [Helen] little rhymes and verses, too. They fix beautiful thoughts in her memory. I think, too, that they quicken all the child’s faculties, because they stimulate the imagination. Of course I don’t try to explain everything. If I did, there would be no opportunity for the play of fancy. Too much explanation directs the child’s attention to words and sentences, so that he fails to get the thought as a whole. I do not think anyone can read, or talk for that matter, until he forgets words and sentences in the technical sense.” (December 12, 1887)
[Although, naturally, Miss Sullivan is discussing teaching language to the deaf, I find the following excerpt very pertinent to the education of all children. Miss Sullivan always made it a practice to spell into Helen’s hands complete and intelligent sentences. She did not stop to explain every word, and she avoided a dull and overly-simplistic style: trusting that Helen would be able to identify familiar words, grasp the general idea, and use the context to enrich her vocabulary with the new words. She believed that, like other children, Helen would learn to speak (and write) correctly and naturally by hearing other people speak so. The following excerpt from a letter by Miss Sullivan demonstrates the success of her approach.]
“We visited a little school for the deaf. We were very kindly received, and Helen enjoyed meeting the children. Two of the teachers knew the manual alphabet, and talked to her without an interpreter. They were astonished at her command of language. Not a child in the school, they said, had anything like Helen’s facility of expression, ad some of them had been under instruction for two or three years. [Helen had, at this point, been taught a little over a year.] I was incredulous at first; but after had watched the children at work for a couple of hours, I knew that what I had been told was true, and I wasn’t surprised. In one room some little tots were standing before the blackboard, painfully constructing “simple sentences.” A little girl had written: “I have a new dress. It is a pretty dress. My mama made my pretty new dress. I love mama.” A curly-headed little boy was writing: “I have a large ball. I like to kick my large ball.” When we entered the room, the children’s attention was riveted on Helen. One of them pulled me by the sleeve and said, “Girl is blind.” The teacher was writing on the blackboard: “The girl’s name is Helen. She is deaf. She cannot see. We are very sorry.” I said: “Why do you write those sentences on the board? Wouldn’t the children understand if you talked [presumably with the manual alphabet, since the students are deaf] to them about Helen?” The teacher said something about getting the correct construction, and continued to construct an exercise out of Helen. I asked her if the little girl who had written about the new dress was particularly pleased with her dress. “No, she replied, “I think not; but children learn better if they write about things that concern them personally.” It seemed all so mechanical and difficult, my heart ached for the poor little children. Nobody thinks of making a hearing child say, “I have a pretty new dress,” at the beginning. These children were older in years, it is true, than the baby who lisps, “Papa kiss baby - pretty,” and fills out her meaning my pointing to her new dress; but their ability to understand and use language was no greater.
“There was the same difficulty throughout the school. In every classroom I saw sentences on the blackboard, which evidently had been written to illustrate some grammatical rule, or for the purpose of using words that had been previously taught in the same, or in some other connection. This sort of thing may be necessary in some stages of education; but it isn’t the way to acquire language. Nothing, I think, crushes the child’s impulse to talk naturally more effectually than these blackboard exercises. The schoolroom is not the place to teach any young child language, least of all the deaf child. He must be kept as unconscious as the hearing child of the fact that he is learning words, and he should be allowed to prattle with his fingers, or with his pencil, in monosyllables if he chooses, until such time as his growing intelligence demands the sentence. Language should not be associated in his mind with endless hours in school, with puzzling questions in grammar, or with anything that is an enemy to joy. But I must not get into the habit of criticizing other people’s methods too severely. I may be as far from the straight road as they.” (May 15, 1888)
“... [Helen’s] lessons have been those suggested by the various scenes and experiences through which she has passed. She continues to manifest the same eagerness to learn as at the first. Indeed, I am often obliged to coax her to leave an example or a composition.” (September 26, 1888)
“... [Helen’s] inquisitiveness was so great during these years that it would have interfered with her progress in the acquisition of language, if a consideration of the questions which were constantly occurring to her had been deferred until the completion of a lesson. In all probability she would have forgotten the question, and a good opportunity to explain something of real interest to her would have been lost. Therefore it has always seemed best to me to teach anything whenever my pupil needed to know it, whether it had any bearing on the projected lesson or not; her inquiries have often led us far away from the subject under immediate consideration.” (1891)
“At first I did not attempt to confine my pupil to any system. I always tried to find out what interested her most, and made that the starting-point for the new lesson, whether it had any bearing on the lesson I had planned to teach or not. During the first two years of her intellectual life, I required Helen to write very little. In order to write one must have something to write about, and having something to write about requires some mental preparation. The memory must be stored with ideas and the mind must be enriched with knowledge, before writing becomes a natural and pleasurable effort. Too often, I think, children are required to write before they have anything to say. Teach them to think and read and talk without self-repression, and they will write because they cannot help it.
“Helen acquired language by practice and habit rather than by study of rules and definitions. Grammar with its puzzling array of classifications, nomenclatures, and paradigms, was wholly discarded in her education. She learned language by being brought in contact with the living language itself; she was made to deal with it in everyday conversation, and in her books, and to turn it over a variety of ways until she was able to use it correctly...
“I believe every child has hidden away somewhere in his being noble capacities which may be quickened and developed if we go about it the right way; but we shall never properly develop the higher nature of our little ones while we continue to fill their minds with the so-called rudiments. Mathematics will never make them loving, nor will the accurate knowledge of the size and shape of the world help them to appreciate its beauties. Let us lead them during the first years to find their greatest pleasure in Nature. Let them run in the fields, learn about animals, and observe real things. Children will educate themselves under right conditions. They require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.
“I think much of the fluency with which Helen uses language is due to the fact that nearly every impression which she receives comes through the medium of language. But after due allowance has been made for Helen’s natural aptitude for acquiring language, and for the advantage resulting from her peculiar environment, I think that we shall still find that the constant companionship of good books has been of supreme importance in her education. It may be true, as some maintain, that language cannot express to us much beyond what we have lived and experienced; but I have always observed that children manifest the greatest delight in the lofty, poetic language which we are too ready to think beyond their comprehension. ‘This is all you will understand,’ said a teacher to a class of little children, closing the book which she had been reading to them. ‘Oh, please read us the rest, even if we won’t understand it,’ they pleaded, delighted with the rhythm, and the beauty which they felt, even though they could not have explained it. It is not necessary that a child should understand every word in a book before he can read it with pleasure and profit. Indeed, only such explanations should be given as are really essential. Helen drank in language which she at first could not understand, and it remained in her mind until needed, when it fitted itself naturally and easily into her conversation and compositions. Indeed, it is maintained by some that she reads too much, that a great deal of originative force is dissipated in the enjoyment of books; that when she might see and say things for herself, she sees them only through the eyes of others, and says them in their language; but I am convinced that original composition without the preparation of much reading is an impossibility. Helen has had the best and purest models of language constantly presented to her, and her conversation and her writing are unconscious reproductions of what she has read. Reading, I think, should be kept independent of the regular school exercises. Children should be kept encouraged to read for the pure delight of it. The attitude of the child toward his books should be that of unconscious receptivity. The great works of the imagination ought to become a part of his life, as they were once of the very substance of the men who wrote them. It is true, the more sensitive and imaginative the mind is that receives the thought-pictures and images of literature, the more nicely the finest lines are reproduced. Helen has the vitality of feeling, the freshness and eagerness of interest, and the spiritual insight of the artistic temperament, and naturally she has a more active and intense joy in life, simply as life, and in nature, books, and people than less gifted mortals. Her mind is so filled with the beautiful thoughts and ideals of the great poets that nothing seems commonplace to her; for her imagination colours all life with its own rich hues.” (July, 1894)
Helen Keller came to understand what a rare and wonderful teacher she had. She writes glowingly of her early years of learning under Miss Sullivan. “I learned from life itself.”
Direct interaction with nature was an immense and important part of Helen Keller’s education.
“When the time of daisies and buttercups came Miss Sullivan took me by the hand across the fields, where men were preparing the earth for the seed, to the banks of the Tennessee River, and there, sitting on the warm grass, I had my first lessons in the beneficence of nature. I learned how the sun and the rain make to grow out of the ground every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, how birds build their nests and live and thrive from land to land, how the squirrel, the deer, the lion, and every other creature finds food and shelter. As my knowledge of things grew I felt more and more delight of the world I was in. Long before I learned to do a sum in arithmetic or describe the shape of the earth, Miss Sullivan taught me to find beauty in the fragrant woods, in every blade of grass, and in the curves and dimples of my baby sister’s hand. She linked my earliest thoughts with nature, and made me feel that ‘birds and flowers and I were happy peers.’”
[In this gentle way, Miss Sullivan taught Helen about zoology, botany, mathematics, geography, reading. All of life was a learning experience, and everyday experiences provided the inspiration and object of their lessons. They raised tadpoles, observed the budding of a lily, caught crickets and butterflies, explored the woods or garden, made three-dimensional maps of the world in clay, felt and discussed fossils and shells. Helen never lost her zest for learning, wanting always to know. This is how all education should be, I believe.]
“Any teacher can take a child to a classroom, but not every teacher can make him learn. He will not work joyously unless he feels that liberty is his, whether he is busy or at rest...”
“After I had learned a great many interesting things about the life and habits of the children of the sea - how in the midst of dashing waves the little polyps build the beautiful coral isles of the Pacific, and the foraminifera have made the chalk-hills of many a land - my teacher read me “The Chambered Nautilus,” and showed me that the shell-building process of the mollusks is symbolical of the development of the mind. Just as the wonder-working mantle of the Nautilus changes the material it absorbs from the water and makes it a part of itself, so the bits of knowledge one gathers undergo a similar change and become pearls of thought.”
Photographs: Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan. Unknown Sources.
HILDEGARD said...
“I learned from life itself.” What a packed sentence that is. Since life is in God (nothing can exist or does exist without Him), there is no better place to learn, with our Creator as our Teacher.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008 01:26 PM
Friday, April 11, 2008