I just watched this video of Anne Sullivan describing how Helen Keller learned to speak. Together with her writing, which is excellent, and considering the fact that she did not acquire any kind of communication ability at all until she was past six years old… does this mean that Keller was an exceptionally intelligent person to begin with, with an unusual ability to absorb what Sullivan was teaching her, or was Sullivan an exceptional teacher?
I think it’s hard to compare Keller to modern children born deaf/blind, because the work to teach them starts immediately, whereas Keller (who was not born deaf/blind, it happened when she was 18 months old) was pretty much left to be wild and out of control until Sullivan came along. Acquiring communication ability when you are being taught from the beginning is much different than trying to break through after the age of six.
Per her wikishe she was not made deaf and blind until the age of 19 months, which is very important from a formative point of view. If she was deaf and blind from birth I’m pretty sure she would have been profoundly and permanently crippled mentally if no one engaged her theraputically until age 6.
I think both. I also think both were amazingly stubborn, which is probably more important than the raw intelligence or teaching ability. Both were very hard workers as well. Once Helen realized that Anne was working towards her own end, they both were able to harness that stubbornness and diligence.
My wife was a special ed teacher and actually studied Keller and Sullivan as a case history. She says it was both - Keller was an exceptional student and Sullivan was an exceptional teacher. Also, what Dangerosa said, working hour after hour, day after day.
I would have loved to have gotten to talk to both of them. What a fascinating partnership!
It irritates me that I didn’t know Helen was an open socialist and had various leftist and/or radical leanings until I was an adult. That gets smoothed over in favor of admiration a lot of the time. When I learned that, I liked her more. I suppose being deaf and blind put her in a position where she figured the world would never quite grasp her anyway so why not just be herself and forget the artifice and let the chips fall where they may – I’m sure I wouldn’t have agreed with her on everything, but that’s not the point.
No hijack intended – in fact, I think it only demonstrates that Helen was indeed an intelligent person in that she wasn’t afraid to express her opinions, which from what I have read somewhere were at odds with Anne’s at times. Both of them were interesting and remarkable women.
I didn’t know that either, until I read Lies My Teacher Told Me. My answer to the OP would be that both were probably exceptional human beings. Helen Keller wasn’t just a deaf/blind chick who learned to speak, read, and write, she was a highly visible political leader and heroine of social justice. She spent her whole life fighting oppression and yet we reduce her to this archetype that completely excludes her entire life’s work.
It seems to me that both were extremely persistent and inspired, and it was an extremely fortunate pairing.
One thing I wass surprised to learn is that hers was not a unique case, and Keller’s mother was inspired by the case of Laura Bridgman, fifty years earlier:
and Victorine Morriseau and Julia Brace had preceded her.
Yes, yes it does. I find that downright hilarious.
With no insult intended, of course. Heck, by conservative American standards, I’m probably a socialist myself. And I don’t see that as such a bad thing, either. I’m sure I’d be horrifying to a good percentage of the population of the state I live in. They are cordially invited to bite me, however.
And I am totally hijacking this thread. My apologies.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened to Helen if she hadn’t gone deaf and blind. Would she still have accomplished wonderful things, or would she have simply grown up quietly as an antebellum debutante, married some bland Southern gentleman of whom her father approved, raised a few kids, and died?
It’s hard to say. Keller herself often credited her experience of feeling powerless as a deaf/blind/mute to her recognition of the suffering of others. She also remarked that she knew she was privileged to have a family who could afford Annie Sullivan and that many other disabled people did not have access to the same resources. I think she had in her an inherent compassion and intelligence, but the disability gave her a platform she might not otherwise have had.
Don’t know much about communism in her day; I’m not a communist. Regardless of the vehicle she used, she drew attention to the exploitation of the working class at a time when few people really cared. She brought visibility to the invisible and helped to shape the labor rights movement. Ergo, her life’s work matters very much to me.
Helen Keller was an exceptionally intelligent woman. She passed the entrance exams for Radcliffe with no assistance (using a Braille typewriter), something the average sighted, hearing woman of the time would not have been able to do. She was also disappointed that other deaf-blind children were not able to achieve the same quality of expression as herself, even with training, probably because they were not as intelligent as she was or suffered cognitive deficits.
Of course Annie Sullivan was also a great teacher, and Helen’s intelligence could never have been recognized without Annie’s very effective teaching.
While Helen supported socialism, she also fought vigorously for better education and services for the blind and the deaf, woman’s suffrage, and birth control, none of which I consider moronic causes.
It’s impossible to know what would have happened had Helen never become blind and deaf, but given her incredible spirit and intelligence, I like to believe that she would still have gone to Radcliffe and fought for civil rights.