Page 315 - The Story of My Lif

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, and some of them had been under instruction for two or
three years. I was incredulous at first; but after I 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 mamma made my pretty new dress. I
love mamma.” 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 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 by 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 previously been
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