Page 352 - The Story of My Lif

Surely Dr. Howe is wrong when he says, “A teacher cannot be a child.” That is

just what the teacher of the deaf child must be, a child ready to play and romp,
and interested in all childish things.

The temptation to discuss, solely in the light of Helen Keller, the whole matter of
educating the deaf is a dangerous one, and one which I have not taken particular
care to avoid, because my opinions are of no authority and I have merely tried to

suggest problems and reinforce some of the main ideas expressed by Miss
Sullivan, who is an authority. It is a question whether Helen Keller’s success has
not led teachers to expect too much of other children, and I know of deaf-blind
children who are dragged along by their teachers and friends, and become the
subjects of glowing reports, which are pathetically untrue, because one sees
behind the reports how the children are tugged at to bring them somewhere near
the exaggerated things that are said about them.

Let me sum up a few of the elements that made Helen Keller what she is. In the
first place she had nineteen months’ experience of sight and sound. This meant
some mental development. She had inherited vigour of body and mind. She
expressed ideas in signs before she learned language. Mrs. Keller writes me that
before her illness Helen made signs for everything, and her mother thought this
habit the cause of her slowness in learning to speak. After the illness, when they
were dependent on signs, Helen’s tendency to gesture developed. How far she
could receive communications is hard to determine, but she knew much that was
going on around her. She recognized that others used their lips; she “saw” her
father reading a paper and when he laid it down she sat in his chair and held the
paper before her face. Her early rages were an unhappy expression of the natural
force of character which instruction was to turn into trained and organized
power.

It was, then, to a good subject that Miss Sullivan brought her devotion and
intelligence, and fearless willingness to experiment. Miss Sullivan’s methods
were so good that even without the practical result, any one would recognize the
truth of the teacher’s ideas. Miss Sullivan has in addition a vigorous personality.