How Helen Keller Learned

We know that there are different types of learners and different ways to learn, but the life of Helen Keller is an amazing example of creative instruction and how a ferocious desire to learn can break down barriers and take a student to great heights. Helen Keller (June 1880–June 1968) was a remarkable woman who overcame tremendous personal barriers to become a celebrated American author, political activist, and humanitarian.

Though she is remembered as being deaf, dumb, and blind, she actually was born with the ability to see and hear but lost those senses when she became ill and developed a very high fever when she was just 19 months old. She was closed off from the world except through her sense of touch, and her parents lost their ability to communicate with their daughter. Over time, she developed signs that she could use to “talk” with her family, but because she was so isolated her behavior became very unruly and unmanageable. Just imagine what it was like, how frustrating it was for her to be unable to see or hear the world around her, or to speak or hear the voices of her family.

In 1886, Helen’s mother read a story by Charles Dickens about another deaf/blind woman named Laura Bridgman who was successfully taught to interact with the world. Helen was sent to Baltimore for an evaluation and then was referred to Alexander Graham Bell (the inventor of the telephone, shown with Helen in the photo here), who was working with deaf children at the time. Bell referred Helen to a special school for the blind and there was assigned to recent graduate, Anne Sullivan. Sullivan, who herself was visually impaired, began using a series of techniques to break down the walls that kept Helen so isolated within herself. Endlessly repeating a series of finger motions on the palms of the Helen’s hands (who was extremely frustrated by this exercise) and alternatively running cool water over her hands, Helen excitedly understood the connection between the fingertip touch on her palm and the cool liquid. Anne finally got through to her and Helen learned the idea/symbols for “water.” From there, Helen frantically demanded the names of all the familiar objects, and her world suddenly expanded. A 49-year relationship with Sullivan began.

Together, Anne and Helen moved to Massachusetts to receive schooling from the Perkins Institute for the Blind and then moved to New York to attend the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf and the Horace Mann School for the Deaf. In 1900 they returned to Massachusetts and Helen was admitted to Radcliffe College, where she became the first deaf/blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Helen’s education did not stop there. She was determined to communicate with others as conventionally as possible, to expand her reach to other people, so Anne Sullivan, still at her side, developed a technique where Helen could use her fingertips to touch Anne’s nose, mouth and throat to feel the different vibrations that different letters and words make. In this way, Helen learned to “hear” and use her own voice to communicate. Wanting to expand her experience even further, she was determined to understand music, and with the patient assistance of the Zoellner Quartet, a highly acclaimed chamber music group originally from Brooklyn, New York, Helen spent hours sitting near the group while they played, touching her fingertips to a nearby tabletop so she could feel the resonant vibrations. In this way, Helen learned about the different musical notes, how the notes worked together and combined with rhythm and pacing, allowing her to “hear” and understand chamber music.

Helen went on to lecture and give speeches advocating for services for the deaf/blind community, workers rights, women’s rights, and women’s health, and is also credited as being a co-founder of the ACLU.

“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.” ~Helen Keller

“Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.” ~ Helen Keller

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt within the heart.” ~ Helen Keller

For further reading on the amazing life of Helen Keller:

The Story of My Life: With Her Letters (1887-1901) and a Supplementary Account of Her Education, Including Passages... by Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan (Jul 24, 2011)

Helen Keller (Scholastic Biography) by Margaret Davidson and Wendy Watson (Apr 1, 1989)

And here is a great video from a 1930 newsreel of Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan: