Helen Keller's loss of vision and hearing in infancy made comprehension of the outside world next to impossible—or so it seemed. When teacher Anne Sullivan agreed to work with Keller, that world opened up, especially when Keller comprehended the function and purpose of language. Keller and Sullivan appear in this newsreel footage from 1928, in which Sullivan explains and then demonstrates the methodology used to teach Keller language, most elements of which are still used worldwide with students who are deaf-blind. This full-length version is brought to you by the Described and Captioned Media Program (www.dcmp.org) with the permission of the copyright holder, the University of South Carolina Newsreel Library (www.sc.edu/library/newsfilm/). It has been described for the blind and captioned for the deaf. To learn more about description and captioning, visit the following websites: www.dcmp.org/description and www.dcmp.org/captions.
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How Helen Keller Learned to Talk.
Mrs. Macy and the famous deaf, dumb, and blind pupil she has taught for years
give you a demonstration.
Now, Ann Sullivan.
When I first saw Helen Keller first,
she was six years and eight months old.
She had been blind and deaf and mute
since her 19th month as the result of an illness.
She had no way of communicating with those around her
except a few imitative signs that she had made for herself.
A push meant go, a pull meant come, and so on.
She had observed that we did not use the hands
when we were talking to each other.
And I let her see by putting her hand on my face.
She felt the vibration of the spoken word.
Instantly she felt, I want to talk with my mouth.
That seemed impossible.
But after experimenting for a time,
we found that placing her hand in this position,
the thumb resting on the throat right at the larynx,
the first finger on the lips, the second on the nose,
we found that she could feel the vibration of spoken words.
For instance, the throat, she feels the G,
the hard G, guh, guh.
And on the lips, the K sound, kuh, kuh, kuh.
On the lips she feels the B, buh, buh, buh.
And with the second finger on the nose,
the nasal sound, the nn, nn, nn.
The first word she learned to articulate
was the little word it.
With the hand in this position, I made the vowel i.
She felt it, i.
Then I made the T, t, t, t.
She feels it with the finger on her lips, on my lips.
Then I put the two letters together to form the word.
It, t, t, t.
And the first word was learned.
After her seventh lesson,
she was able to speak the sentence word by word.
I am not dumb now.
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