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How Helen Keller Learned To Speak

Creator: Sarah Fuller (author)
Date: 1892
Publication: American Annals of the Deaf
Source: Available at selected libraries


Introduction

As principal of the Horace Mann School for the Deaf in Boston, Massachusetts, Sarah Fuller represented a new and predominantly female generation of teachers of deaf children. In the years after the Civil War, women increasingly moved into the public sphere, attending college and taking jobs outside the home; school superintendents also found female teachers to be ideal employees because they could be paid less than men and were considered to be more patient and selfless. Female teachers’ low salaries proved especially important in the subfield of oral deaf education, since teaching deaf children how to lip-read and speak was an immensely time-consuming task. In this report, Fuller gives a sense of the painstaking work involved with teaching Helen Keller to speak.

Keller’s work with Fuller reflected another new trend in deaf education: the shift from boarding schools to day schools. Unlike manualist educators (those who used sign language), oralist teachers believed that deaf children should be isolated from other deaf people and be encouraged to interact with hearing relatives and friends as much as possible. Therefore, oralist educators sought to make it possible for deaf children to live at home and attend specialized schools (or day schools) nearby. The Horace Mann School that Fuller headed and at which Keller took lessons was one of these new day schools for deaf children.

For Keller, learning to speak was a liberating experience, albeit one requiring immense effort on her part. Keller felt that speech would enable her to communicate far more easily with her family and friends. Later on, she explained that speech allowed her to think more quickly (as opposed to fingerspelling or Braille) and made her more useful, since she could interact with far more people. As shown in this report, Keller’s reflections on learning speech reinforced oralist mantras: that unlike sign language, speech would allow deaf people to communicate with relatives and integrate into the community. Oralists such as Sarah Fuller and Alexander Graham Bell, however, never acknowledged that Keller’s speech was barely comprehensible to anyone except themselves and Anne Sullivan.


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* Read before the meeting of the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf, at Lake George, New York, July, 1891, by Miss SARAH FULLER, Principal of the Horace Mann School, Boston, Mass.

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POSSIBLY I cannot better begin an account of the way in which Helen Keller was taught to speak than by reading a letter, written by herself, in response to my wish to know how it happened that she came to wish to speak:

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SOUTH BOSTON, MASS., April 3, 1890.

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MY DEAR MISS FULLER: My heart is full of joy this beautiful morning because I have learned to speak many new words, and I can make a few sentences. Last evening I went out in the yard and spoke to the moon. I said, "O moon, come to me!" Do you think the lovely moon was glad that I could speak to her? How glad my mother will be; I can hardly wait for June to come, I am so eager to speak to her and to my precious little sister. Mildred could not understand me when I spelled with my fingers, but now she will sit in my lap and I will tell her many things to please her, and we shall be so happy together. Are you very, very happy because you can make so many people happy? I think you are very kind and patient, and I love you very dearly.

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My teacher told me Tuesday that you wanted to know how I came to wish to talk with my mouth. I will tell you all about it, for I remember my thoughts perfectly. When I was a very little child I used to sit in my mother's lap nearly all the time, because I was very timid, and did not like to be left by myself, and I would keep my little hand on her face all the while, because it amused me to feel her face and lips move when she talked with people. I did not know then what she was doing, for I was quite ignorant of all things. Then, when I was older, I learned to play with my nurse and the little negro children, and I noticed that they kept moving their lips just like my mother; so I moved mine, too, but sometimes it made me angry, and I would hold my playmates' mouths very hard. I did not know then that it was very naughty to do so. After a long time my dear teacher came to me, and taught me to communicate with my fingers, and I was satisfied and happy. But when I came to school in Boston I met some deaf people who talked with their mouths like all other people, and one day a lady who had been to Norway came to see me and told me of a blind and deaf girl she had seen in that faraway land, who had been taught to speak and understand others when they spoke to her. This good and happy news delighted me exceedingly, for then I was sure that I should learn also.

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I tried to make sounds like my little playmates, but teacher told me that the voice was very delicate and sensitive, and that it would injure it to make incorrect sounds, and promised to take me to see a kind and wise lady who would teach me rightly. That lady was yourself. Now I am as happy as the little birds, because I can speak, and perhaps I shall sing, too. All of my friends will be so surprised and glad.

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Your loving little pupil,

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HELEN A. KELLER.

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The first intimation to me of Helen's desire to speak was on the twenty-sixth of March, 1890, when her teacher, Miss Sullivan, called upon me with Helen and asked me to help her to teach Helen to speak, "For," said she, "Helen has spelled upon her fingers, 'I must speak.'" As I had, nearly two years before, expressed my belief in the possibility of her acquiring speech, I was glad to know that she was to be allowed to make an attempt to use her vocal organs, and began immediately to familiarize her with the position and condition of the various mouth parts, and with the trachea. This I did by passing her hand lightly over the lower part of my face, and by putting her fingers into my mouth. She quickly appreciated that the teeth enclose the tongue, which fills the entire mouth cavity; that the tongue and lips are exceedingly soft and delicate, and very flexible; that the lower jaw moves up and down, and that the course of the trachea may be followed as it passes down behind the long framework of the chest. I then placed my tongue in the position for the sound of i in it, and let her find the point as it lay perfectly still and soft in the bed of the jaw, just behind the lower front teeth, and discover that the teeth were slightly parted. After this investigation, I placed one of her forefingers upon my teeth, and the other upon my throat or trachea, at the lowest point where it may be felt, and repeated the sound "i" several times. During this time, Helen, standing in front of me, in the attitude of one listening intently, gave the closest attention to every detail, and when I ceased making the sound, her fingers flew to her own mouth and throat, and after arranging her tongue and teeth she uttered the sound "i" so nearly like that I had made it seemed like an echo of it. When told that she had given the sound correctly, she repeated it again and again. I next showed her, by means of her sensitive fingers, the depression through the centre of the tongue when in position for the sound of "ä" and the opening between the teeth during the utterance of that sound. Again she waited with her fingers upon my teeth and throat until I sounded "ä" several times, and then she gave the vowel fairly well. A little practice enabled her to give it perfectly. We then repeated the sound of "i" and contrasted it with "ä." Having these two differing positions well fixed in her mind, I illustrated the position of the tongue and lips while sounding the vowel "ô." She experimented with her own mouth, and soon produced a clear, well-defined "ô." After acquiring this she began to ask what the sounds represented, and if they were words, and I then told her that "i" is one of the sounds of the letter I, that "ä" is one of the sounds of the letter A, and that some letters have many different sounds, but that it would not be difficult for her to think of these sounds after she had learned to speak words. I next took the position for "ä," Helen following as before with her fingers, and while sounding the vowel, closed my lips, producing the word arm. Without hesitation she arranged her tongue, repeated the sounds, and was delighted to know that she had pronounced a word. Her teacher suggested to her that she should let me hear her say the words mamma and papa, which she had tried to speak before coming to me, and she quickly and forcibly said " mum mum, pup pup." I commended her effort, and said that it would be better to speak very softly, and to sound one part of the word longer than she did the other. I then illustrated what I wanted her to understand by pronouncing the word mamma very delicately, and at the same time drawing my finger along upon the back of her hand to show the relative length of the two syllables. After a few repetitions, the words mamma, papa, came almost with musical sweetness from her lips.

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