Page 350 - The Story of My Lif

working vocabulary in French was very small, but by using her judgment, as we

laughingly called the mental process, she could guess at the meanings of the
words and put the sense together much as a child puzzles out a sliced object. The
result was that in a few weeks she and I spent a most hilarious hour one evening
while she poured out to me the whole story, dwelling with great gusto on its
humour and sparkling wit. It was not a lesson, but only one of her recreations.”

So Helen Keller’s aptitude for language is her whole mental aptitude, turned to
language because of its extraordinary value to her.

There have been many discussions of the question whether Helen Keller’s
achievements are due to her natural ability or to the method by which she was
taught.

It is true that a teacher with ten times Miss Sullivan’s genius could not have
made a pupil so remarkable as Helen Keller out of a child born dull and mentally
deficient. But it is also true that, with ten times her native genius, Helen Keller
could not have grown to what she is, if she had not been excellently taught from
the very start, and especially at the start. And the fact remains that she was

taught by a method of teaching language to the deaf the essential principles of
which are clearly expressed in Miss Sullivan’s letters, written while she was
discovering the method and putting it successfully into practice. And it can be
applied by any teacher to any healthy deaf child, and in the broadest
interpretation of the principles, can be applied to the teaching of language of all
kinds to all children.

In the many discussions of this question writers seem to throw us from one horn
to another of a dilemma—either a born genius in Helen Keller, or a perfect
method in the teacher. Both things may be true at once, and there is another truth
which makes the dilemma imperfect. Miss Sullivan is a person of extraordinary
power. Her method might not succeed so completely in the hands of any one
else. Miss Sullivan’s vigorous, original mind has lent much of its vitality to her