AP5 Bringing History to Life

This was my second attempt at this project.  This first time I presented it was at Tampines Changkat TMC.  The speech, about Maria Montessori, was more of a chronological record than a story and so the evaluator Coen Ching rightly 'failed' me.

I read up various internet reports about Helen Keller and put together a story about her relationship with her teacher Anne Sullivan. I presented it at Kampong Glam TMC to a group of non-toastmasters as a demo speech and was evaluated by DTM Christine Lim.

FROM DARKNESS INTO LIGHT (A story about Helen Keller)
Kate was deeply troubled. Her 6-year-old daughter Helen was becoming more and more uncontrollable. She had contracted an illness when she was 19 months old. It had left her blind, deaf, and consequently mute. Frustrated that she could not see nor communicate with anyone, Helen would fly into uncontrollable rages and tantrums everyday.

One day, Kate came across an article about the successful education of another deaf and blind child, Laura Bridgman and excitedly showed it to her husband. The couple quickly contacted the Perkins Institute for the Blind, the school where Laura had been educated. The school's director, asked former student Anne Sullivan to become Keller's instructor. Anne was herself visually impaired and only 20 years old,

Anne Sullivan arrived at Helen Keller's house in March 1887. Kate brought Helen to Anne and placed Helen's hand in Anne's. 'Hello Helen, I have a present for you.' Anne said, even though she knew Helen could not hear her. Anne placed a doll in Helen's hands and Helen started feeling the doll and stroking her hair. Then Anne took one of Helen's hands and started finger writing on her palm. She was spelling the word 'doll' d-o-l-l. Helen did not understand what Anne was doing. She pulled her hand away and continued to stroke the doll.

The next few days were traumatic. Helen hit, pinched, and kicked her teacher and even knocked out one of her teeth. Anne convinced her parents she needed two weeks alone with the child if she was to achieve any progress in her education. Anne finally gained control by moving with the girl into a small cottage on the Kellers’ property. Through patience and firm consistency, she finally won the child’s heart and trust, a necessary step before Helen's education could proceed.

Helen's mother once told Anne that Helen had been precocious in her learning of language before her illness and that her first word had been "wah-wah" for water. One day, while Anne and Keller were at the water pump refilling a pitcher of water, Anne kept spelling the word 'water' into Helen's palm. Suddenly, Helen whispered 'wah-wah'. She kept repeating it. Finally she understood that 'wah-wah' or w-a-t-e-r was the the tangible substance splashing from the pump.

It was a moment of enlightenment that brought Helen from darkness into light. She finally understood that words represented things. Later Helen Keller wrote in her autobiography:

"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! … Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life."

Helen wrote of the days that followed, “I did nothing but explore with my hands and learn the name of every object that I touched; and the more I handled things and learned their names and uses, the more joyous and confident grew my sense of kinship with the rest of the world.”

Sullivan fingerspelled to her constantly, and coached her in the give-and-take of conversation. Keller’s love of language, her great articulateness and grace as a writer and public speaker were built upon this foundation.

The following year Helen attended the Perkins Institute for the Blind where she joined other little blind children in their work and play, and talked continually. She was delighted to find that nearly all of her new friends could spell with their fingers. She wrote of this experience: "Oh, what happiness! To talk freely with other children! To feel at home in the great world!” Helen studied French, arithmetic, geography, and other subjects. She especially enjoyed the library of embossed books and the tactile museum’s collection of bird and animal specimens.

Later Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan moved to New York to attend other special schools for the deaf and eventually in 1904, at the age of 24, Helen Keller graduated from Radcliffe College, becoming the first deaf blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Keller went on to become a world-famous speaker and author. She is remembered as an advocate for people with disabilities.  She was able to achieve all this because of one person - her teacher Anne Sullivan.

Anne Sullivan became more than a teacher to Helen Keller.  They became lifelong companions who lived, worked, and traveled together. By 1935, Anne Sullivan became completely blind. She died at age 70, with Keller holding her hand. When Keller herself died in 1968, her ashes were placed next to Anne's.

In October 2009, a bronze statue of Helen Keller was added to the National Statuary Hall Collection in America. It depicts Keller as a seven year old child standing at a water pump. The statue represents the significant moment in Helen Keller's life when she understood her first word: W-A-T-E-R, as signed into her hand by teacher Anne Sullivan. The pedestal base bears a quotation in raised letters and Braille characters: "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, they must be felt with the heart."

Christine's recommendations for improvement included more vocal variety and dramatisation to make the story come alive.

A good start to the new year.  Two more project speeches to AC-S!