HELEN KELLER'S TEACHER
TEACHER, Anne Sullivan Macy, by Helen Keller; Victor Gollancz, English price 15/-. Most of us have heard something of how Anne Sullivan liberated the spirit held captive in Helen Keller’s unseeing, unhearing body; but I for one had never realised that her own story was almost as heroic as her pupil’s. She was twenty when she came to Helen; she was half-blind herself and had lived a sordid childhood mostly in institutions She had very little education, and took on the thankless job of looking after a savage deaf-blind child because after she graduated from the Perkins Institute for the Blind she was penniless and there was nothing better offering. This was the girl whose own genius and persistence and immense vitality enabled her to take a deaf-blind chiid further towards normal humanity than had ever been done before, Only one other had been educated and that was fifty years earlier; every attempt in the
meantime had failed. Anne Sullivan did more than educate Helen Keller, in the narrow sense. She made her live. There’s a marvellous passage here describing how she taught Helen to laugh, and the meaning of laughter. She remained an essential part of Helen Keller until she died fifty years later, through ups and downs resulting-in part from her own stormy temperament; but Helen Keller became more than a mere part of Anne Sullivan, who was determined that she was to be as far as possible a complete human. It wasn’t wholly possible and the dependence remained, but it’s significant that Helen developed religious and political beliefs which her teacher didn’t share at all. She preached pacifism and socialism, and outraged the public which had taken a sentimental interest in her. Anne Sullivan was constantly harassed by criticisms of her teaching methods, criticisms which continue to this day. In the light of this moving and penetrating book they become impertinent, in both senses of the word.
R. D.
McE.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 902, 16 November 1956, Page 13
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326HELEN KELLER'S TEACHER New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 902, 16 November 1956, Page 13
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