The Story of My Life
When friends have told her of the great happiness which awaits her in
another life, she instantly asked: "How do you know, if you have not
been dead?"
The literal sense in which she sometimes takes common words and idioms
shows how necessary it is that we should make sure that she receives
their correct meaning. When told recently that Hungarians were born
musicians, she asked in surprise, "Do they sing when they are born?"
When her friend added that some of the pupils he had seen in Budapest
had more than one hundred tunes in their heads, she said, laughing, "I
think their heads must be very noisy." She sees the ridiculous quickly,
and, instead of being seriously troubled by metaphorical language, she
is often amused at her own too literal conception of its meaning.
Having been told that the soul was without form, she was much perplexed
at David's words, "He leadeth my soul." "Has it feet? Can it walk? Is it
blind?" she asked; for in her mind the idea of being led was associated
with blindness.
Of all the subjects which perplex and trouble Helen, none distresses her
so much as the knowledge of the existence of evil, and of the suffering
which results from it. For a long time it was possible to keep this
knowledge from her; and it will always be comparatively easy to prevent
her from coming in personal contact with vice and wickedness. The fact
that sin exists, and that great misery results from it, dawned gradually
upon her mind as she understood more and more clearly the lives and
experiences of those around her. The necessity of laws and penalties had
to be explained to her. She found it very hard to reconcile the presence
of evil in the world with the idea of God which had been presented to
her mind.
One day she asked, "Does God take care of us all the time?" She was
answered in the affirmative. "Then why did He let little sister fall
this morning, and hurt her head so badly?" Another time she was asking
about the power and goodness of God. She had been told of a terrible
storm at sea, in which several lives were lost, and she asked, "Why did
not God save the people if He can do all things?"
Surrounded by loving friends and the gentlest influences, as Helen
had always been, she has, from the earliest stage of her intellectual
enlightenment, willingly done right. She knows with unerring instinct
what is right, and does it joyously. She does not think of one wrong
act as harmless, of another as of no consequence, and of another as not
intended. To her pure soul all evil is equally unlovely.
These passages from the paper Miss Sullivan prepared for the meeting at
Chautauqua, in July, 1894, of the American Association to Promote the
Teaching of Speech to the Deaf, contain her latest written account of
her methods.
You must not imagine that as soon as Helen grasped the idea that
everything had a name she at once became mistress of the treasury of
the English language, or that "her mental faculties emerged, full armed,
from their then living tomb, as Pallas Athene from the head of Zeus,"
as one of her enthusiastic admirers would have us believe. At first, the
words, phrases and sentences which she used in expressing her thoughts
were all reproductions of what we had used in conversation with her, and
which her memory had unconsciously retained. And indeed, this is true
of the language of all children. Their language is the memory of the
language they hear spoken in their homes. Countless repetition of the
conversation of daily life has impressed certain words and phrases upon
their memories, and when they come to talk themselves, memory supplies
the words they lisp. Likewise, the language of educated people is the
memory of the language of books.
Language grows out of life, out of its needs and experiences. At first
my little pupil's mind was all but vacant. She had been living in a
world she could not realize. LANGUAGE and KNOWLEDGE are indissolubly
connected; they are interdependent. Good work in language presupposes
and depends on a real knowledge of things. As soon as Helen grasped
the idea that everything had a name, and that by means of the manual
alphabet these names could be transmitted from one to another, I
proceeded to awaken her further interest in the OBJECTS whose names she
learned to spell with such evident joy. I NEVER TAUGHT LANGUAGE FOR THE
PURPOSE OF TEACHING IT; but invariably used language as a medium for the
communication of THOUGHT; thus the learning of language was
COINCIDENT with the acquisition of knowledge. In order to use language
intelligently, one must have something to talk ABOUT, and having
something to talk about is the result of having had experiences; no
amount of language training will enable our little children to use
language with ease and fluency unless they have something clearly in
their minds which they wish to communicate, or unless we succeed in
awakening in them a desire to know what is in the minds of others.
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 in a variety of ways
until she was able to use it correctly. No doubt I talked much more with
my fingers, and more constantly than I should have done with my mouth;
for had she possessed the use of sight and hearing, she would have been
less dependent on me for entertainment and instruction.
I believe every child has hidden away somewhere in his being noble
capacities which may be quickened and developed if we go about it in the
right way; but we shall never properly develop the higher natures 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 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
in 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 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.
There has been much discussion of such of Miss Sullivan's statements and
explanations as have been published before. Too much has been written by
people who do not know the problems of the deaf at first hand, and I
do not care to add much to it. Miss Keller's education, however, is so
fundamentally a question of language teaching that it rather includes
the problems of the deaf than limits itself to the deaf alone. Teachers
can draw their own conclusions. For the majority of readers, who will
not approach Miss Keller's life from the educator's point of view, I
will summarize a few principal things in Miss Sullivan's methods.
Miss Sullivan has begun where Dr. Howe left off. He invented the
instrument, the physical means of working, but the teaching of language
is quite another thing from the mechanical means by which language may
be taught. By experiment, by studying other children, Miss Sullivan came
upon the practical way of teaching language by the natural method. It
was for this "natural method" that Dr. Howe was groping, but he never
got to this idea, that a deaf child should not be taught each word
separately by definition, but should be given language by endless
repetition of language which it does not understand. And this is
Miss Sullivan's great discovery. All day long in their play-time and
work-time Miss Sullivan kept spelling into her pupil's hand, and by that
Helen Keller absorbed words, just as the child in the cradle absorbs
words by hearing thousands of them before he uses one and by associating
the words with the occasion of their utterance. Thus he learns that
words name things and actions and feelings. Now, that is the first