補(bǔ)充閱讀 Achievement of Helen Keller

Achievement of Helen KellerHelen Keller was one of Americas best known women. Admired for her courage and achievements in spite of not being able to see or hear, she was known throughout the world for her self-sacrificing work to improve the condition of the blind, the deaf, and the speechless. When she died on June 1, 1968, the newspaper Washington Post wrote: “Her life was truly one of the most remarkable phenomena of our time and her death just short of the age of 88 leaves the whole world poorer.”Helen Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama. For the first 19 months of her life, she was a pretty, happy baby, normal in every way. Then a sudden illness destroyed her sight and hearing. Because she could not hear sounds to imitate, she could not speak.Miss Keller wrote,I fancy I still have confused recollections of that illness. I especially remember the tenderness with which my mother tried to soothe me in waking hours of fret and pain Gradually I got used to the silence and darkness that surrounded me and forgot that it had ever been different.Until she was seven, Helen was violent, stubborn, and given to sudden seizures of uncontrollable rage. Within her there was a bundle of hidden powers that were desperate from not being used.Helen used to say that her real birthday was not June 27, 1880, but March 3, 1887-the day when Anne Sullivan entered her life. Miss Sullivan was from Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston, Massachusetts. Three days after her arrival at the Keller home, Miss Sullivan wrote to friends about her meeting with the seven-year-old Helen:I had scarcely put my foot on the steps when she rushed forward with such force that she would have thrown me over backward if Captain Keller had not been behind me. She felt my face and dress and my bag, which she took out of my hand and tried to open.So began a teacher-pupil relationship and a friendship broken only when Anne Sullivan and a friendship broken only when Anne Sullivan died, nearly 50 years later. Miss Keller always treasured the day they first met as her “souls birthday.”Difficult days followed. Helen, petted and spoiled by a sympathetic family, already had become a quick-tempered, often uncontrollable child. Anne Sullivan realized that her greatest problem would be to train the little girl in self-control and obedience without breaking her spirit. A battle of wills developed-sometimes, in fact, there was an actual physical conflict between the difficult child and the determined young teacher. This is not greatly surprising, since, after all, nobody had ever tried to teach Helen before-nobody had known how to communicate with her.Anne Sullivan was not an ordinary teacher; she was a most extraordinary young woman. She herself had been blind as a child. She had learned to read Braille, the alphabet of raised dots developed by the Frenchman, Louis Braille. Eventually, after a series of operations, Annes eyesight was partially restored. The young teachers greatest qualification, however, was her sympathetic understanding of this child who had neither sight nor hearing, coupled with a great determination to help her.Miss Sullivan began by teaching Helen to spell certain words by the system called manual spelling. She would tap the letters into Helens hand, then place in her hand the article that the word described. The first word Helen learned was “doll.” Helen described this experience: I was at once interested in this finger play and tried to imitate it. When I finally succeeded in making the letters correctly. Running downstairs to my mother, I help up my hand and made the letters for doll. I did not know that I was spelling a word, or even that words existed. In the days that followed I learned to spell in this uncomprehending way a great many wordsbut my teacher had been with me for several weeks before I understood that everything has a name. Helen gained this understanding in a dramatic manner. One morning, she walked with her teacher through the garden to the well-house, where the water pump was located. She describes the incident:My teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten - a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free. There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.From that day forward, Anne Sullivan, who later became Mrs. John Macy, remained with Miss Keller until her death. She was simply “Teacher” to Helen and the child made remarkable progress. Within a few weeks Helen knew the meaning of more than a hundred words and learned new ones every day. Very quickly she mastered not only the manual alphabet, but also various forms of raised printing, including Braille. She was not satisfied, however; she was determined to learn to talk. Eventually, with Anne Sullivans patient help, she acquired a measure of speech, although many sounds were difficult for her to pronounce, and her voice lacked color and an ability to vary tone.As Helen learned to communicate, an extraordinary intelligence and a spirit of rare beauty began to unfold, qualities which grew throughout her lifetime. Determined to go to college, this amazing young woman went first to the Cambridge School for Young Ladies, and in 1900 to Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from which she was graduated cum laude four years later. It was Anne Sullivan who made this miracle possible - sitting by Helens side in every class, tapping the professors words into her hand, reading to her by the hour, until her own eyes were red and inflamed. While in college, Miss Keller wrote her first book, The Story of My Life. Translated into 50 languages, it has brought inspiration to millions, to the blind who have traced its words in Braille, and to those who have vision and can read it. From this book the world first began to learn about the unconquerable spirit of Helen Keller. Later, she wrote scores of magazine articles and ten more books. Isolated though Miss Keller was by blindness and deafness, she was anything but isolated in mind, spirit and abilities. She said:I am, myself, still a reasonable human being In my isolation I have had the opportunity to read, and to ponder, and to think, and to be educated - and to me the darkness and the silence exist no longer.And in every way Helen Keller proved that the darkness and the silence did not exist for her. She learned to swim, to sail, to ride horseback. Concerts were a pleasure to her - she had a perception of music through waves of sound, and could fell its vibrations through solid objects. She loved the theater, with Anne Sullivan at her side to translate the words of the actors by tapping them into her hand. On her Braille typewriter she answered the letters which came to her from all parts of the word.Miss Keller and Anne Sullivan traveled widely in their efforts to raise money for the care and education of the blind. Anne was her lifeline to the world, and Helen once said, “If she were gone away, I should be blind and deaf in very truth.” It was, perhaps, a foreboding of death. Anne Sullivan, whose health had been failing for some time, died in 1936.But there was someone to take Anne Sullivans place. Polly Thompson, a young Scotswoman who had joined the Keller household some years before as a secretary, gradually became the household manager and eventually Helens close friend and confidante. And so Helen Keller continued to travel through the United States and the world, with Polly as her devoted companion.After World War II, Miss Keller spent most of her time visiting hospitals, bringing comfort and hope to blinded soldiers and to the women and children of other countries who had lost their sight in bombings. She and her companion were received by kings and presidents, premiers and prime ministers. Everywhere they went, Helen spoke out about the need for increased care of the blind, for education to help them to take their place in the world. She told the Minister of Education of one country: “ As long as one soul is allowed to sit alone, universal peace may remain only a dim dream. Civilization is no longer a local affair.”Honors too numerous to list were given to this remarkable woman, among them honorary degrees and special citations from universities and governments, but to Miss Keller these honors were only incidental to the joy she received in helping others. In 1964 Miss Keller joined the select ranks of recipients of the Presidents Medal of Freedom, Americas highest civilian honor. The following year she was named at the top of a list of ten of the worlds outstanding women.Moving in darkness and silence, Helen Keller, with her unquenchable enthusiasm for life and learning, was able to fell that she “ was using all her senses within,” and to say:Delight is essential to growth and self-improvement. He who does not see that joy is an important force in the world misses the essence of life. Joy is a spiritual element that gives vicissitudes unity and significance.In 1960 Miss Keller again suffered a great loss;