Leaders in Education
Anne Mansfield Sullivan (1866–1936)
The proof is in the pupil. In this case, Helen Keller, a blind and deaf pupil, was a
terror. Wily and mean, Helen was also animal-like. Nevertheless, her teacher, Anne
Sullivan, enabled her to become an international celebrity.
Sullivan pioneered the teaching of individuals without sight and without hearing.
Today we speak of a deaf culture, but this term was not used in the era of Anne Sullivan.
"Teacher," as Helen always called her, is credited with making it possible to reach
students who were thought to have mental retardation.
The daughter of Irish immigrants, Sullivan was born in Feeding Hills, Mass., on
April 14, 1866 and entered the almshouse at eight when her mother died and her father
abandoned her and her brother. Half-blind herself, she went to the Perkins School for the
Blind in Boston at age fourteen without a toothbrush, hat, or coat; her only possessions
were a shirt and stockings tied in a bundle.
At age twenty-one, Sullivan took a job offered by the Keller family in Tuscumbia,
Ala., to teach the Kellers’ daughter, Helen. Helen Keller was an angry and frustrated
child, but she was not stupid. Sullivan saw this and began her assault on Helen’s locked
mind. Within a month, she made contact with Helen in the now famous pump story,
immortalized in the drama The Miracle Worker. Sullivan fingerspelled words into
Helen’s hand, each word suiting an action. Finally, Helen, feeling water over her hand,
realized the connection between word and object. She had broken the code and realized
that everything had a name.
Sullivan’s methods were practical. She taught Helen to play through games and
exercises, stimulating her to ask the names of the motions. She kept a menagerie of
animals for Helen to help her understand movement. She progressed to abstractions like
peace and God as soon as her pupil was ready.
Sullivan wanted to make Helen as normal as possible, giving her every experience
she could. She worked at teaching her to sit, stand, and walk properly. As soon as Helen
could distinguish between right and wrong, "Teacher" sent her to bed for misdeeds.
Laziness, carelessness, untidiness, and procrastination were dealt with by ingenuity,
humor, and light sarcasm.
Helen used the manual alphabet for three years before she began to speak. When
Helen was nine, Sullivan was rewarded with the words "I am not dumb now." It was one
of the most dramatic achievements in the history of teaching.
Sullivan’s great discovery was that a child should not be taught each word
separately by a separate definition but instead should be given endless repetition of
language he or she does not understand all day long. Sullivan continually spelled words
into Helen’s hand to mimic the way a hearing child in the cradle absorbs words. This
method had never before been put into practice in the education of a deaf child, especially
a deaf-blind one.
When Helen attended a school for deaf pupils in New York, Annie Sullivan went
along. At Cambridge School and Radcliffe College, Sullivan attended classes,
interpreting instruction and looking up words for Helen. She made herself eye and ear to
Helen and supplied knowledge to a starving mind as she fired her pupil’s drive to study
hard. After college, Sullivan accompanied Helen on worldwide lecture tours as Helen
became a famous author and personality.
Extraordinarily close, teacher and pupil spent much of their lives together. The
name "Teacher" has been enriched by Annie Sullivan’s dedicated life, persistent high
standards, and creative instruction.
Visit the following web sites for more information on Anne Mansfield Sullivan
Macy:
Who Was Anne Mansfield Sullivan Macy?
http://ia.essortment.com/whowasanneman_rqfq.htm
This brief biography adds more details about Anne Sullivan’s personal life to the
information in your textbook.
American Foundation for the Blind
http://www.afb.org/section.asp?sectionid=1
The American Foundation for the Blind provides access to a great deal of information on
Helen Keller, and much of it includes Anne Sullivan Macy. Visit the photographs to see
what she looked like, and the correspondence to read letters between Ms. Macy and her
famous pupil, as well as (in the “On Education” of the correspondence) a transcript of the
address that Anne Mansfield Sullivan Macy delivered at Temple University when she
was awarded an honorary degree there shortly before her death in 1932.