A work
in progress edited by Daniel
Schugurensky
Department of Adult Education, Community Development and Counselling Psychology,
The Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT)
In
1882, a baby girl caught a fever that was so fierce she nearly died.
She survived, but the fever left its mark.
She could no longer see or hear. Helen
Keller was born on June 27, 1880 in Alabama, the daughter of a newspaper editor.
There has never been a precise diagnosis of the type and cause of the
fever that struck Helen (Royal National Institute for the blind, 1995).
The Kellers sought advice and remedies for Helen.
As she approached the age of 7, they visited Alexander Graham Bell in
Washington, DC. An activist in deaf
education, Bell recommended they
send Helen to the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston.
A recent graduate of the school, Anne Sullivan, also known as Annie, was
offered to tutor Helen. In March
1987, Annie arrived in Tuscumbia, Alabama to live with the Kellers as governess
(“Tragedy to Triumph,” no date).
Over
the next several years, Helen had learned to communicate many of her wishes with
various signs. There were some 60
gestures she had invented to ask for things or identify people.
But, she was otherwise frustrated in her attempts to communicate, and her
frustration led to behaviour problems (R.N.I.B, 20).
By the summer of 1887, some four months after Annie arrived, and as Helen
approached her seventh birthday, she had a vocabulary numbering hundreds of
words and was forming simple sentences. She
could print using block letters. To
write, she used a grooved writing board that was placed over a sheet of paper.
Helen wrote the letters in the grooves, writing with a pencil and guiding
the end of the pencil with the index finger of her hand (Tragedy to Triumph, no
date). She began to mail letters to
her relatives. That same summer
Helen also learned the Braille alphabet.
In
the spring of 1888, as Helen approached 8 years old, she left Alabama with Annie
to go to Perkins School in Boston. This
was the first of several trips to the school.
Helen was exposed to an array of resources and her abilities increased.
She learned quickly and was dubbed the “miracle child.”
In her ninth year Helen began to speak.
Her first speech teacher, Sarah Fuller, had her feel the shape of her
mouth as she spoke. As she learned
to speak, she also learned to read lips with her fingers (“Tragedy to
Triumph,” no date).
As Helen approached the end of her regular schooling, she began to think of college. Some said she should not do it, but many schools wanted her to attend. She chose the one college in the United States who did not want her, Radcliffe. They thought she could not compete with “sighted” students and this was tantamount to a challenge for Helen (R.N.I.B, 2001). First, she passed her entry exams and then, with Anne Sullivan as a translator, attended regular classes. Helen Keller noted (1961):