I saw the Helen Keller story when I was still in grade school. Interesting story, and good movie too. I think Patty Duke really was the best pick to play the part.
Anyways, as the story is often told, and retold and retold, Keller was blind and deaf before she learned language. So her teacher, and eyes and ears for many years after that, Anne Sullivan, started from scratch. Water. Food. Face. These were all the things she showed Keller with, not with her eyes or ears, but with her hands. And Keller learned then all, apparently eventually with great enthusiasm (if you believe the movie). Then Keller got an education. And became a leader and advocate for democratic socialism and women’s rights. I have no problem with that.
But that is what confuses me.
How do you teach someone, with just their hands, about socialism, and other abstract principles and concepts?
I know I am probably missing something here, though as yet I don’t know what. So please be patient and kind with your replies:).
And thank you all in advance, to all who reply and view:):)
There is variant of sign language used to communicate with people who both blind and deaf. It is a fully formed human language that can be used to communicate abstract concepts just like any verbal language. Helen’s teachers taught her that language along with braille. Through translations by interpreters for the blind-and-deaf and braille books Helen learned about the world.
Keller learned to communicate with people by “reading” their lips with her hands. She could talk, of course, and she eventually became a pretty good orator. She could also understand sign language by “reading” their hands with her hands. She learned to read braille. I don’t know how she usually read books, whether it was by braille or by having someone read them to her. In any case, she read well enough that she graduated from college and wrote 12 books. Keller’s family was well off and could afford to hire companions for her all her life, so there was always someone there who could read to her (apparently by finger-spelling into her hand) or write down what she said. The second reference below tells how she became a socialist:
The same way non-deaf, non-blind people learn about them–a combination of just “hearing” or reading people using words and learning what they mean through context, and by people or books explaining them using the words we already know.
I mean, parents will teach their kids the words for objects, and they eventually learn complex, abstract ideas, too. The only real difference with Keller is that she wouldn’t “hear” spontaneous conversations unless she had a translator with her. She probably learned more from people talking to her directly. And mostly from books, once she learned to read braille. .
Same as how she learned about sex. When she was I think 17 she read a braille book with passages about sex and asked her teacher what that was all about.
Well not really. Helen was disgusted by many of the things going on around her like all the people left blind, deaf, or maimed by the working conditions and chemicals in the factories of her time who’s owners cared only about greed. She was disgusted by WW1 and all the men who came home blind.
Also she read letters from persons in Germany. France, and Britain who were blind because medicines that could have saved them were unavailable because of the war. Once during WW1 she offered to donate the proceeds of her books printed in Germany to re leave the suffering of the blind people in Germany but she caught alot of flak because of it.
And then there were racial issues. Since she was blind she could not see people’s color and wanted to treat them all the same but society (she was from the south) said no. Why cant a black child who is blind go the same school as a white one?
So it comes down to her experiences plus socialism was popular at the time with books by Upton Sinclair.
Really, this completely answers the question if the OP was assuming that she only learned touch-feel things and no higher concepts or abstract ideas. Her path to literacy was different from most people’s, but Keller was
[ol]
[li]Blind.[/li][li]Deaf.[/li][li]Brilliant.[/li][li]Literate.[/li][li]Educated.[/li][li]Socialist-to-Communist (deep pink if not red)[/li][li]Outspoken.[/li][li]Beloved by half the country and derided by the other as a puppet of her handlers.[/li][/ol]
The problem with the movie is that its limited view of her life has supplanted the larger picture for most people, and a fuzzy feel-good story stops before she turns into something most people were (and still would be) uncomfortable with. An amazing person, with her rise to communication and literacy over such great hurdles being only chapter one.
It was hers to lose; Duke had created the role for William Gibson’s Broadway play in 1959 opposite Anne Bancroft as Annie Sullivan. When the movie was cast in 1961, there was very little doubt that Duke would win the role: Bancroft and director William Penn both reprised their Broadway roles and were both strong advocates for Duke, as was Gibson, who wrote the screenplay.
The only concern was Duke’s age: she was always a small child, but was growing enough that there was concern she’d be obviously too old to play Helen for the movie. Duke relates in her autobiography that at the film’s wrap party (a pool party at Penn’s home) she came outside in a leopard-print swimsuit and Penn remarked, “Sheesh – we just made it.”
That is a great summary of her life but I would also add in her family, her role in her family, and the racial issues Helen dealt with as being a person who loved black people yet being from a family of southern slave owners.
Maybe even more challenging, Don Wardlow has been blind since birth, but he is the color analyst on the radio broadcasts of the Charleston (SC) River Dogs baseball games. Without ever seeing baseball (or any other gme) played, or playing it himself, he understands the nuances of the game well enough that he can hear a description, visualize all the dynamics of the game and analyze it for the radio audience.
