Question

Keller family believed in both formal and informal education. Elaborate.

Answer 1

Helen Keller is arguably the most famous
disabled person in history. Her extraordinary
achievements despite losing both sight and
hearing at the age of just 19 months have been
the subject of numerous films and books.
However, not everyone was convinced these
achievements were genuine.
One such sceptic was Dr Martin W Barr, director
of the School for the Feeble Minded in Elwyn,
Pennsylvania, who in 1896 tried to verify what he
had read in the press about the then sixteen year
old Helen Keller. Replies he received from
Perkins Institution and Massachusetts School for
the Blind , Pennsylvania Institution for the
Instruction of the Blind , and the Cambridge
School for Young Ladies are now available to
read in the Wellcome Library as MS.8927 .
All of the institutions he wrote to had previously
been involved in teaching Helen Keller. The
Perkins Institute in particular had played a key
role. In 1886, the Keller family had contacted the
director of the Institute, Michael Anagnos, on the
advice of Alexander Graham Bell . At this point,
six year old Helen had created more than sixty
signs which enabled her to communicate with
her family in a very limited way. However, she
was unable to communicate with anyone outside
her family apart from Martha Washington, the
young daughter of the family cook.
Helen Keller with Anne Sullivan, Cape Cod,
July 1888
Michael Anagnos sent his 20 year old partially
sighted former pupil Anne Sullivan to live with
the Keller family. Her work with Helen Keller is
documented in the film The Miracle Worker,
which famously depicts Anne’s breakthrough
when she was able to get Helen to understand
the sign for water by running water onto one
palm whilst drawing the correct sign on her
other hand with her finger. Anne Sullivan would
remain with Helen Keller until her death in 1936,
firstly as her teacher and later as a companion.
At the age of eight, Helen began her formal
education at the Perkins Institute. In 1894 she
and Anne moved to New York so she could study
at the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf and
the Horace Mann School for the Deaf . Two years
later Helen and Anne moved again, this time to
Cambridge Massachusetts where Helen was
enrolled at the Cambridge School for Young
Ladies. This was the first time she had been
educated alongside seeing and hearing pupils.
Still aged just sixteen, she took, and passed with
flying colours, the entrance exams for Radcliffe
College , the female annexe to Harvard
University. It was at this point her fame began
to spread.
Another item found within this extremely small
archive is a partial transcript concerning these
college entrance exams. The author, presumably
someone from her school or one of the colleges,
is at pains to point out that Keller did not
receive any special treatment. The exams she
took were the same as those taken by other
potential college entrants. In fact, Helen Keller
was put at a distinct disadvantage as she was
not given any extra time to complete the exams.
Whereas sighted pupils could read the questions
and answer them immediately, Helen had to wait
to have the questions read to her before she
could provide her answers.