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After
the first year or two Dr. Howe did not teach Laura Bridgman himself, but gave
her over to other teachers, who under his direction carried on the work of
teaching her language.
Too
much cannot be said in praise of Dr. Howe's work. As an investigator he kept
always the scientist's attitude. He never forgot to keep his records of Laura
Bridgman in the fashion of one who works in a laboratory. The result is, his
records of her are systematic and careful. From a scientific standpoint it is
unfortunate that it was impossible to keep such a complete record of Helen
Keller's development. This in itself is a great comment on the difference
between Laura Bridgman and Helen Keller. Laura always remained an object of
curious study. Helen Keller became so rapidly a distinctive personality that she
kept her teacher in a breathless race to meet the needs of her pupil, with no
time or strength to make a scientific study.
In
some ways this is unfortunate. Miss Sullivan knew at the beginning that Helen
Keller would be more interesting and successful than Laura Bridgman, and she
expresses in one of her letters the need of keeping notes. But neither
temperament nor training allowed her to make her pupil the object of any
experiment or observation which did not help in the child's development. As soon
as a thing was done, a definite goal passed, the teacher did not always look
back and describe the way she had come. The explanation of the fact was
unimportant compared to the fact itself and the need of hurrying on. There are
two other reasons why Miss Sullivan's records are incomplete. It has always been
a severe tax on her eyes to write, and she was early discouraged from publishing
data by the inaccurate use made of what she at first supplied.
When
she first wrote from Tuscumbia to Mr. Michael Anagnos, Dr. Howes son-in-law and
his successor as Director of the Perkins Institution, about her work with her
pupil, the Boston papers began at once to publish exaggerated accounts of Helen
Keller. Miss Sullivan protested. In a letter dated April 10, 1887, only five
weeks after she went to Helen Keller, she wrote to a friend:
"--
sent me a Boston Herald containing a stupid article about Helen. How perfectly
absurd to say that Helen is 'already talking fluently!' Why, one might just as
well say that a two-year-old child converses fluently when he says 'apple give,'
or 'baby walk go.' I suppose if you included his screaming, crowing, whimpering,
grunting, squalling, with occasional kicks, in his conversation, it might be
regarded as fluent--even eloquent. Then it is amusing to read of the elaborate
preparation I underwent to fit me for the great task my friends entrusted to me.
I am sorry that preparation didn't include spelling, it would have saved me such
a lot of trouble."
On
March 4, 1888, she writes in a letter:
"Indeed,
I am heartily glad that I don't know all that is being said and written about
Helen and myself. I assure you I know quite enough. Nearly every mail brings
some absurd statement, printed or written. The truth is not wonderful enough to
suit the newspapers; so they enlarge upon it and invent ridiculous
embellishments. One paper has Helen demonstrating problems in geometry by means
of her playing blocks. I expect to hear next that she has written a treatise on
the origin and future of the planets!"
In
December, 1887, appeared the first report of the Director of the Perkins
Institution, which deals with Helen Keller. For this report Miss Sullivan
prepared, in reluctant compliance with the request of Mr. Anagnos, an account of
her work. This with the extracts from her letters, scattered through the report,
is the first valid source of information about Helen Keller. Of this report Miss
Sullivan wrote in a letter dated October 30, 1887:
"Have
you seen the paper I wrote for the 'report'? Mr. Anagnos was delighted with it.
He says Helen's progress has been 'a triumphal march from the beginning,' and he
has many flattering things to say about her teacher. I think he is inclined to
exaggerate; at all events, his language is too glowing, and simple facts are set
forth in such a manner that they bewilder one. Doubtless the work of the past
few months does seem like a triumphal march to him; but then people seldom see
the halting and painful steps by which the most insignificant success is
achieved."
As
Mr. Anagnos was the head of a great institution, what he said had much more
effect than the facts in Miss Sullivan's account on which he based his
statements. The newspapers caught Mr. Anagnos's spirit and exaggerated a
hundred-fold. In a year after she first went to Helen Keller, Miss Sullivan
found herself and her pupil the centre of a stupendous fiction. Then the
educators all over the world said their say and for the most part did not help
matters. There grew up a mass of controversial matter which it is amusing to
read now. Teachers of the deaf proved a priori that what Miss Sullivan had done
could not be, and some discredit was reflected on her statements, because they
were surrounded by the vague eloquence of Mr. Anagnos. Thus the story of Helen
Keller, incredible when told with moderation, had the misfortune to be heralded
by exaggerated announcements, and naturally met either an ignorant credulity or
an incredulous hostility.
In
November, 1888, another report of the Perkins Institution appeared with a second
paper by Miss Sullivan, and then nothing official was published until November,
1891, when Mr. Anagnos issued the last Perkins Institution report containing
anything about Helen Keller. For this report Miss Sullivan wrote the fullest and
largest account she has ever written; and in this report appeared the
"Frost King," which is discussed fully in a later chapter. Then the
controversy waxed fiercer than ever.
Finding
that other people seemed to know so much more about Helen Keller than she did,
Miss Sullivan kept silent and has been silent for ten years, except for her
paper in the first volta Bureau Souvenir of Helen Keller and the paper which, at
Dr. Bell's request, she prepared in 1894 for the meeting at Chautauqua of the
American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf. When Dr.
Bell and others tell her, what is certainly true from an impersonal point of
view, that she owes it to the cause of education to write what she knows, she
answers very properly that she owes all her time and all her energies to her
pupil.
Although
Miss Sullivan is still rather amused than distressed when some one, even one of
her friends, makes mistakes in published articles about her and Miss Keller,
still she sees that Miss Keller's book should include all the information that
the teacher could at present furnish. So she consented to the publication of
extracts from letters which she wrote during the first year of her work with her
pupil. These letters were written to Mrs. Sophia C. Hopkins, the only person to
whom Miss Sullivan ever wrote freely. Mrs. Hopkins has been a matron at the
Perkins Institution for twenty years, and during the time that Miss Sullivan was
a pupil there she was like a mother to her. In these letters we have an almost
weekly record of Miss Sullivan's work. Some of the details she had forgotten, as
she grew more and more to generalize. Many people have thought that any attempt
to find the principles in her method would be nothing but a later theory
superimposed on Miss Sullivan's work. But it is evident that in these letters
she was making a clear analysis of what she was doing. She was her own critic,
and in spite of her later declaration, made with her modest carelessness, that
she followed no particular method, she was very clearly learning from her task
and phrasing at the time principles of education of unique value not only in the
teaching of the deaf but in the teaching of all children. The extracts from her
letters and reports form an important contribution to pedagogy, and more than
justify the opinion of Dr. Daniel C. Gilman, who wrote in 1893, when he was
President of Johns Hopkins University:
"I
have just read... your most interesting account of the various steps you have
taken in the education of your wonderful pupil, and I hope you will allow me to
express my admiration for the wisdom that has guided your methods and the
affection which has inspired your labours."
Miss
Anne Mansfield Sullivan was born at Springfield, Massachusetts. Very early in
her life she became almost totally blind, and she entered the Perkins
Institution October 7, 1880, when she was fourteen years old. Later her sight
was partially restored.
Mr.
Anagnos says in his report of 1887: "She was obliged to begin her education
at the lowest and most elementary point; but she showed from the very start that
she had in herself the force and capacity which insure success.... She has
finally reached the goal for which she strove so bravely. The golden words that
Dr. Howe uttered and the example that he left passed into her thoughts and heart
and helped her on the road to usefulness; and now she stands by his side as his
worthy successor in one of the most cherished branches of his work.... Miss
Sullivan's talents are of the highest order."
In
1886 she graduated from the Perkins Institution. When Captain Keller applied to
the director for a teacher, Mr. Anagnos recommended her. The only time she had
to prepare herself for the work with her pupil was from August, 1886, when
Captain Keller wrote, to February, 1887. During this time she read Dr. Howe's
reports. She was further aided by the fact that during the six years of her
school life she had lived in the house with Laura Bridgman. It was Dr. Howe who,
by his work with Laura Bridgman, made Miss Sullivan's work possible: but it was
Miss Sullivan who discovered the way to teach language to the deaf-blind.
It
must be remembered that Miss Sullivan had to solve her problems unaided by
previous experience or the assistance of any other teacher. During the first
year of her work with Helen Keller, in which she taught her pupil language, they
were in Tuscumbia; and when they came North and visited the Perkins Institution,
Helen Keller was never a regular student there or subject to the discipline of
the Institution. The impression that Miss Sullivan educated Helen Keller
"under the direction of Mr. Anagnos" is erroneous. In the three years
during which at various times Miss Keller and Miss Sullivan were guests of the
Perkins Institution, the teachers there did not help Miss Sullivan, and Mr.
Anagnos did not even use the manual alphabet with facility as a means of
communication. Mr. Anagnos wrote in the report of the Perkins Institution, dated
November 27, 1888: "At my urgent request, Helen, accompanied by her mother
and her teacher, came to the North in the last week of May, and spent several
months with us as our guests.... We gladly allowed her to use freely our library
of embossed books, our collection of stuffed animals, sea-shells, models of
flowers and plants, and the rest of our apparatus for instructing the blind
through the sense of touch. I do not doubt that she derived from them much
pleasure and not a little profit. But whether Helen stays at home or makes
visits in other parts of the country, her education is always under the
immediate direction and exclusive control of her teacher. No one interferes with
Miss Sullivan's plans, or shares in her tasks. She has been allowed entire
freedom in the choice of means and methods for carrying on her great work; and,
as we can judge by the results, she has made a most judicious and discreet use
of this privilege. What the little pupil has thus far accomplished is widely
known, and her wonderful attainments command general admiration; but only those
who are familiar with the particulars of the grand achievement know that the
credit is largely due to the intelligence, wisdom, sagacity, unremitting
perseverance and unbending will of the instructress, who rescued the child from
the depths of everlasting night and stillness, and watched over the different
phases of her mental and moral development with maternal solicitude and
enthusiastic devotion."
Here
follow in order Miss Sullivan's letters and the most important passages from the
reports. I have omitted from each succeeding report what has already been
explained and does not need to be repeated. For the ease of the reader I have,
with Miss Sullivan's consent, made the extracts run together continuously and
supplied words of connection and the resulting necessary changes in syntax, and
Miss Sullivan has made slight changes in the phrasing of her reports and also of
her letters, which were carelessly written. I have also italicized a few
important passages. Some of her opinions Miss Sullivan would like to enlarge and
revise. That remains for her to do at another time. At present we have here the
fullest record that has been published. The first letter is dated March 6, 1887,
three days after her arrival in Tuscumbia.
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