Most schoolchildren are taught about the fascinating life of Helen Keller. Helen was born in Alabama near the end of the last century. Helen was deaf and blind, but with her Teacher’s help she overcame these challenges. She and her Teacher, Annie Sullivan, eventually gained global fame.
Around 1902, Annie, aged twenty and herself visually impaired, came to live with the Kellers just before Helen’s seventh birthday, to see if there was any hope of teaching Helen. At that time, Helen was more like a wild animal than a child: destructive, willful, unmanageable, and entirely unable to communicate. Annie, however, saw the spark of an agile mind and a quick intelligence in Helen.
Annie decided that she needed to remove Helen from the family in order to be free of family distractions and to have Helen focused only on Annie’s input. Helen and Annie moved to a small cottage on the Keller property. Within a few weeks’ time, by isolating Helen from her family and immersing her in a flood of fingerspelling, Annie penetrated Helen’s wall of ignorance and taught her that words mean things. This was the breakthrough that reopened the world to Helen.
What many people don’t know is that Helen Keller was born sighted and hearing. She was a healthy and inquisitive baby until she was eighteen months old. She became ill with a high fever which robbed her of her sight and her hearing. As anyone who has been acquainted with an eighteen-month-old knows, they understand quite a lot of what they hear, and many of them are very verbal. So, by the time Helen lost her hearing she already had a good basis of language development. This undoubtedly served her well in her later endeavors.
Helen became famous for her astonishing achievements despite her challenges. She graduated from college, traveled the world with her beloved Teacher, was a friend of Presidents, and even learned to speak and to address large audiences, although she never heard her own voice.
Sign language made possible a life of fulfillment, success and fame for Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan. Before the Kellers found Annie, they had sadly considered sending Helen to an “asylum.” The Kellers had visited one or two of these places as well. Back around 1900, asylums were horrific places, and were certainly no place for a handicapped child. Annie was just graduating from the Perkins School for the Blind at the time, and had no other prospects for her own future. Annie and Helen were literally each other’s last and only chance. If sign language had not existed, their lives would have turned out quite differently.
Rosemary Kurtz, M.A. holds a Master’s Degree in Education of the Deaf. She performed the role of Annie Sullivan for many years. Ms. Kurtz believes in broad-based education for all, and taught her own hearing children to sign from their earliest days. For information on teaching your child sign language please visit http://www.signlanguageforchildren.com