http://www.afb.org/annesullivan/asmbiography.

asp

Anne Sullivan Macy Biography

Anne Sullivan Macy (1866 - 1936)
Anne was born on April 14, 1866 in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts. Though she was called Anne or Annie
from the very beginning, her baptismal certificate identifies her as Johanna Mansfield Sullivan. Her
parents, Thomas Sullivan and Alice Cloesy Sullivan, were poor, illiterate Irish immigrants. Her mother
was frail, suffering from tuberculosis. Her father was unskilled and alcoholic.

Little or nothing in Anne Sullivan's early years encouraged or supported her lively, inquiring mind. She
was unschooled; hot tempered; nearly blind from untreated trachoma by age seven; and, on her
mother's death when Anne was eight years old, left to deal with her abusive father and maintain their
dilapidated home. Two years later Thomas Sullivan abandoned his family.

On February 22, 1876, Anne and her brother Jimmie were sent to the state almshouse in Tewksbury,
Massachusetts. Jimmie, who was younger than Anne and had been born with a tubercular hip, died a
short time later. Anne spent four years at Tewksbury, enduring the grief of her brother's death and the
disappointment of two unsuccessful eye operations. Then, as a result of her direct plea to a state
official who had come to inspect the Tewksbury almshouse, she was allowed to leave and enroll in the
Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, Massachusetts. Her life changed profoundly at that point.

At Perkins, in October 1880, Anne finally began her academic educationquickly learning to read and
write. She also learned to use the manual alphabet in order to communicate with a friend who was
deaf as well as blind. That particular skill opened the door to her future and a life of remarkable
achievements. While at Perkins, Anne had several successful eye operations, which improved her sight
significantly. In 1886 she graduated from Perkins as valedictorian of her class. A short time later, Anne
accepted the Keller family's offer to come to Tuscumbia, Alabama, to tutor their blind, deaf, mute
daughter, Helen.

In March of 1887 Anne began her lifelong role as Helen Keller's beloved Teacher. In short order she
managed to make contact with the angry, rebellious child, who learned eagerly and quickly once Anne
had gained her confidence. Anne was Helen's educator for thirteen years and, in 1900, accompanied
her to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Helen was admitted to Radcliffe College. Anne went with
Helen to every class, spelling into her hand all the lectures, demonstrations, and assignments. When
Helen received her bachelor of arts degree, it was a triumph for both women. While Anne was not
officially a student, she had gained a college education.
During the years at Radcliffe, John Albert Macy became Anne and Helen's friend and helped
edit Helen's autobiography. He and Anne fell in love and married on May 3, 1905. Within a few years,
their marriage began to disintegrate. By 1914 they separated, though they never officially divorced.

Anne spent the following years living first in Wrentham, Massachusetts and then in Forest Hills with
Helen and Polly Thomson. Polly became an essential part of their household, acting as Helen's
secretary and assisting Anne. As early as 1916 Anne's health began to weaken. She was incorrectly
diagnosed as having tuberculosis and ordered to recuperate at Lake Placid. Polly went with her and the
two women soon left Lake Placid for the warmer climate of Puerto Rico, returning to Forest Hills when
the United States entered World War I.

Despite Anne's declining health, the three women traveled widely in the United States and, after the
war, in other countries. They gave lectures, vaudeville performances, and even appeared in a film titled
"Deliverance." In 1924, Anne and Helen began to work for the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)
as advocates, counselors, and fundraisers.

In 1930-31 Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania wished to recognize Anne and Helen's
achievements with honorary degrees. Helen accepted but Anne refused. A year later, at the urging of
Helen and other friends, Anne reluctantly accepted the honor.

In 1936, at the age of seventy, Anne Sullivan Macy died at home in Forest Hills, New York on October
20.
Early years

Anne's Formative Years (1866-1886)

Irish Immigrants
Anne Sullivan was the eldest daughter of poor, illiterate, and unskilled Irish immigrants. She
was born in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts on April 14, 1866.

Anne was raised in extreme poverty. She was the eldest of five children, only two of whom
reached adulthood. Her father, Thomas Sullivan, was an alcoholic and her mother, Alice
Chloesy Sullivan, died from tuberculosis when Anne was 9 years old.

When Anne was 7 years old she developed trachoma, a bacterial infection of the eyes. This
infection went untreated and affected her vision. She had almost no usable sight until she had
an operation at the age of 15, which restored some of her vision, but she remained visually
impaired for the rest of her life.

Sullivan's family situation became extremely difficult after the death of her mother in January
1874. At first, Anne's siblings, Mary and Jimmie, were sent to live with their uncle, and Anne
remained with her father. During this time, Thomas Sullivan shared stories with Anne about
Irish folklore and railed against the injustice of Irish landlords and the British.

This portion of her childhood ended on February 22, 1876, when Jimmie and Anne were sent
to the Tewksbury Almshouse, an institution that housed poor and needy people. Anne was just
10 years old at the time.

Their sister Mary was sent to live with an aunt. Jimmie died three months later in the
Almshouse, and it appears that Anne never saw Mary again.

Almhouse in tewksbury

Anne's Formative Years (1866-1886)

Entering Tewksbury Almshouse
No explanation exists as to why Anne and Jimmie were sent to the almshouse, while their
sister Mary was sent to an aunt's house. However, Nella Braddy Henney, in her biography
entitled Anne Sullivan Macy, suggests that Anne and Jimmie were harder to handle than
Mary; Anne because she misbehaved and was contrary, and Jimmie because he suffered from a
tubercular hip.

Upon their arrival at Tewksbury, Anne successfully protested against attempts to separate her
from her brother. As a result, both siblings were sent to the women's ward, where inmates
included women who were physically and mentally ill:

Very much of what I remember about Tewksbury is indecent, cruel, melancholy, gruesome in
the light of grown-up experience; but nothing corresponding with my present understanding of
these ideas entered my child mind. Everything interested me. I was not shocked, pained,
grieved or troubled by what happened. Such things happened. People behaved like thatthat
was all that there was to it. It was all the life I knew. Things impressed themselves upon me
because I had a receptive mind. Curiosity kept me alert and keen to know everything.
Image courtesy of the Public Health Museum, Tewksbury, Massachusetts
Anne finally began her academic education

Anne's Formative Years (1866-1886)

Perkins School for the Blind
Anne was determined to get out of Tewskbury. She had heard of a school for blind children in
Massachusetts and she had heard that an investigation of Tewksbury was about to take place.
In 1880, when Frank B. Sanborn, an official for the State Board of Charities of Massachusetts,
came to inspect the school, Anne flung herself at him saying, "Mr. Sanborn, Mr. Sanborn, I
want to go to school!"

Her plea was successful. Very soon after she had pleaded with the official, she was sent to the
Perkins School for the Blind. Some of the women who lived at Tewksbury dressed her for the
journey, replacing her threadbare and ill-fitting garments with better clothing. She later
recounted the train journey to Perkins on October 7, 1880:

The essence of poverty, is shame. Shame to have been overwhelmed by ugliness, shame to be
the hole in the perfect pattern of the universe. In that moment an intense realization of the
ugliness of my appearance seized me. I knew that the calico dress which I had thought rather
pretty when they put it on me was the cause of the woman's pity, and I was glad that she could
not see the only other garment I had on...the inadequacy of my outfit did not dawn upon me
until the woman pitied me.
Anne's Formative Years (1866-1886)
The Manual Alphabet
One of the most important skills that Anne learned at the Perkins School for the Blind was the
manual alphabet developed for deaf people. Each letter of the alphabet is formed with a
different hand sign. For a person who is deaf-blind, words are signed into the palm of the hand.
The person feels the movement of the fingers, which are surrounded by the listener's hand. The
ability to sign into another's palm was a key part of Anne's later success in communicating
with Helen Keller.

At Perkins Anne's hard work and keen mind resulted in her being chosen as the valedictorian
of her class in 1886. She gave the following speech at the commencement ceremony:

All the wondrous physical, intellectual and moral endowments, with which man is blessed,
will, by inevitable law, become useless, unless he uses and improves them...If a love for truth
and beauty and goodness is not cultivated, the mind loses the strength which comes from truth,
the refinement which comes from beauty, and the happiness which comes from goodness.
Helen Keller's beloved Teacher.

Anne as Teacher (1886-1904)

Governess Wanted in Alabama
In August of 1886, Michael Anagnos, Director of the Perkins School for the Blind, asked his
star pupil, Anne, if she was interested in working for the Keller family in Tuscumbia,
Alabama. He told her that their six-year-old daughter, Helen, had been deaf and blind since the
age of 19 months because of a severe illness.

Since that time the baby had grown into a wild and increasingly uncontrollable child. The
parents, Kate and Arthur Keller, had contacted the famous inventor and educator of the deaf,
Alexander Graham Bell in Washington, D.C. for help. He, in turn, had put them in touch with
the Perkins School for the Blind.
Anne as Teacher (1886-1904)
Teaching Helen
The 21-year-old Anne Sullivan came to Tuscumbia, Alabama on March 3, 1887. From the
moment she arrived she began to sign words into Helen's hand, trying to help her understand
the idea that everything has a name.

This period of Helen Keller's life is best known to people because of the film The Miracle
Worker. The film correctly depicted Helen as an unruly, spoiled, but very bright child who
tyrannized the household with her temper tantrums.

Anne saw the need to discipline, but not crush, the spirit of her young charge. As a result,
within a week of her arrival, Anne had gained permission to remove Helen from the main
house and live alone with her in the nearby cottage where she could teach Helen obedience.

Anne's work with Helen is documented in her correspondence with Sophia Hopkins, a wealthy
New Englander who had taken a motherly interest in Anne when she was a pupil at Perkins.
Anne wrote the following to Hopkins:

As I began to teach her, I was beset by many difficulties. She wouldn't yield a point without
contesting it to the bitter end. I couldn't coax her or compromise with her. To get her to do the
simplest thing, such as combing her hair or washing her hands or buttoning her boots, it was
necessary to use force, and, of course, a distressing scene followed...I saw clearly that it was
useless to try to teach her language or anything else until she learned to obey me. I have
thought about it a great deal, and the more I think, the more certain I am that obedience is the
gateway through which knowledge, yes, and love, too, enter the mind of the child.

Read full letter

I must write you a line this morning because something very important has happened. Helen
has taken the second great step in her education. She has learned that everything has a name,
and that the manual alphabet is the key to everything she wants to know.

In a previous letter I think I wrote you that "mug" and "milk" had given Helen more trouble
than all the rest. She confused the nouns with the verb "drink." She didn't know the word for
"drink," but went through the pantomime of drinking whenever she spelled "mug" or "milk."
This morning, while she was washing, she wanted to know the name for "water." When she
wants to know the name of anything, she points to it and pats my hand. I spelled "w-a-t-e-r"
and thought no more about it until after breakfast. Then it occurred to me that with the help of
this new word I might succeed in straightening out the "mug-milk" difficulty. We went out to
the pump-house, and I made Helen hold her mug under the spout while I pumped. As the cold
water gushed forth, filling the mug, I spelled "w-a-t-e-r" in Helen's free hand. The word
coming so close upon the sensation of cold water rushing over her hand seemed to startle her.
She dropped the mug and stood as one transfixed. A new light came into her face. She spelled
"water" several times. Then she dropped on the ground and asked for its name and pointed to
the pump and the trellis, and suddenly turning round she asked for my name. I spelled
"Teacher." Just then the nurse brought Helen's little sister into the pump-house, and Helen
spelled "baby" and pointed to the nurse. All the way back to the house she was highly excited,
and learned the name of every object she touched, so that in a few hours she had added thirty
new words to her vocabulary. Here are some of them: Door, open, shut, give, go, come, and a
great many more.

P.S.--I didn't finish my letter in time to get it posted last night; so I shall add a line. Helen got
up this morning like a radiant fairy. She has flitted from object to object, asking the name of
everything and kissing me for very gladness. Last night when I got in bed, she stole into my
arms of her own accord and kissed me for the first time, and I thought my heart would burst, so
full was it of joy.

Anne as Teacher (1886-1904)

The Power of Words
After Helen's breakthrough in understanding the meaning of words, she moved ahead with
amazing speed. Within three weeks, she had learned more than 100 words. Anne taught her as
one would teach a young child. "I shall assume that she has the normal child's capacity of
assimilation and imitation. I shall use complete sentences in talking to her." Anne took all she
had learned at Perkins about teaching a deaf-blind child and adapted her knowledge to produce
a more natural way of teaching. Many of Helen's lessons were outdoors. Anne realized that this
deaf-blind child could learn much using her three remaining senses of touch, smell, and taste:

It is wonderful how words generate ideas! Every new word Helen learns seems to carry with it
the necessity for many more. Her mind grows through its ceaseless activity.
Anne's Letter to Sophia C. Hopkins (May 16,
1887)
May 16, 1887.

We have begun to take long walks every morning, immediately after breakfast. The weather is
fine, and the air is full of the scent of strawberries. Our objective point is Keller's Landing, on
the Tennessee, about two miles distant. We never know how we get there, or where we are at a
given moment; but that only adds to our enjoyment, especially when everything is new and
strange. Indeed, I feel as if I had never seen anything until now, Helen finds so much to ask
about along the way. We chase butterflies, and sometimes catch one. Then we sit down under a
tree, or in the shade of a bush, and talk about it. Afterwards, if it has survived the lesson, we let
it go; but usually its life and beauty are sacrificed on the altar of learning, though in another
sense it lives forever; for has it not been transformed into living thoughts? It is wonderful how
words generate ideas! Every new word Helen learns seems to carry with it necessity for many
more. Her mind grows through its ceaseless activity.

Keller's Landing was used during the war to land troops, but has long since gone to pieces, and
is overgrown with moss and weeds. The solitude of the place sets one dreaming. Near the
landing there is a beautiful little spring, which Helen calls "squirrel-cup," because I told her the
squirrels came there to drink. She has felt dead squirrels and rabbits and other wild animals, and
is anxious to see a "walk-squirrel," which interpreted, means, I think, a "live squirrel." We go
home about dinner-time usually, and Helen is eager to tell her mother everything she has seen.
This desire to repeat what has been told her shows a marked advance in the development of her
intellect, and is an invaluable stimulus to the acquisition of language. I ask all her friends to
encourage her to tell them of her doings, and to manifest as much curiosity and pleasure in her
little adventures as they possibly can. This gratifies the child's love of approbation and keeps up
her interest in things. This is the basis of real intercourse. She makes many mistakes, of course,
twists words and phrases, puts the cart before the horse, and gets herself into hopeless tangles of
nouns and verbs; but so does the hearing child. I am sure these difficulties will take care of
themselves. The impulse to tell is the important thing. I supply a word here and there,
sometimes a sentence, and suggest something which she has omitted or forgotten. Thus her
vocabulary grows apace, and the new words germinate and bring forth new ideas; and they are
the stuff out of which heaven and earth are made.
Anne as Teacher (1886-1904)
Teaching Helen Keller How to Speak
By the age of ten, Helen Keller was proficient in reading braille and in manual sign language
and she now wished to learn how to speak. Anne took Helen to the Horace Mann School for
the Deaf in Boston. The principal, Sarah Fuller, gave Helen eleven lessons. Then Anne took
over and Helen learned how to speak. But she was never truly satisfied with her speech, which
was often hard to understand. She struggled to vocalize her words throughout much of her life.

The method that Anne used was pioneered in America by Sophia Alcorn, a teacher at the
Kentucky School for the Deaf in Danville, Kentucky. She succeeded in teaching two young
deaf-blind children named Tad Chapman and Oma Simpson to speak. Alcorn named her
method Tad-Oma after these two pupils. The children were taught to speak by touching their
teacher's cheek and feeling vocal vibrations.
Anne as Teacher (1886-1904)
Anne's Educational Philosophy
In June 1892, Anne was elected a member of the American Association to Promote the
Teaching of Speech to the Deaf. In 1894, Alexander Graham Bell asked her to give a speech at
an Association meeting. She was so shy, however, that Bell had to deliver the speech for her.

It was at this meeting that Anne and Helen met a man named John D. Wright. He convinced
them to attend a new school in New York City run by him and a colleague. Helen was the only
deaf-blind pupil at the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf. Anne was critical of the teaching
methods used there, which were very different from hers. She writes the following to John
Hitz, Alexander Graham Bell's assistant at the Volta Bureau:

Helen learned language almost as unconsciously as the normal child. Here it is made a
"lesson." The child sits in-doors [sic], and for an hour the teacher endeavors more or less
skilfully [sic] to engrave words upon his brain....The contrast between these children's
plodding pursuit of knowledge and Helen's bounding joyousness makes me wonder.

Helen Keller reads Anne's lips with her fingers as they sit together in a tree. A dog at their feet
sits on a wooden board placed between two strong branches of the tree. Both Helen and Anne
wear long, high-necked, light-colored dresses. Their hair is pulled back in buns. Wrentham,
Massachusetts, 1904.
The House in Wrentham, Massachusetts
(1904-1917)
In Praise of Anne
Anne's contribution to education was increasingly recognized, as was her stature as an
important American woman. At the time of her marriage to John in 1905, Century Magazine
editor and good friend Richard W. Gilder, wrote the following to John:

...She is one of the women of our times, - her fate, her happiness are matters of interest to
many. She, too, should be a writer -- for she has shown great force of direct, sincere,
discerning narrative...

In 1915, Anne was honored with a "Teacher's Medal" at the Panama-Pacific International
Exposition in San Francisco. The following excerpt is from the speech that she gave at that
event:

[Our schools]...uproot the creative ideals of childhood and plant in their place worthless ideals
of ownership. The fine soul of the child is of far greater importance than high marks, yet the
system causes the pupil to prize high grades above knowledge, and he goes from the schools
into his life work believing always that the score is more important than the game, possession
more praiseworthy than achievements.

Read full speech

The other honoree was the famous educator Dr. Maria Montessori. During this event, when
Montessori was drawn to talk about Anne she said "I have been called a pioneer...but there is
your pioneer."

At the event, Helen was annoyed as she felt that yet again, the focus of attention was on her
and not her teacher. This feeling was only reinforced by the fact that the event took place on a
day designated as "Helen Keller Day."

Anne's Speech at the Panama-Pacific

International Exposition (1915)
From my heart I thank the department of education and the Panama-Pacific Exposition for the
distinguished honor they have conferred on my pupil and myself. The beautiful medal I accept
not only as a personal tribute, but as an earnest of your faith in new and more free methods of
education. The medal, Helen Keller Day, the splendid compliment paid us by this great
assemblage all celebrate an achievement in education. No greater honor can be paid a teacher
than the recognition of her work. You see before you a teacher whose mature years have been
passed wholly in the performance of one task, the training of one human being. For years I have
known the teacher's one supreme reward, that of seeing the child she had taught grow into a
living force in the world. And today has brought me the happiness of knowing that my work is
an inspiration to other teachers.

In honoring Helen Keller and her teacher you declare your faith that in every child born into the
world there are latent capacities for the development of an individual that shall be an honor to
the human race; you attest your belief that every teacher worthy [of] that exalted name is able
and willing to help to build the school of the future, the school of freedom.

Each of us has come here with dreams and hopes and plans for this new school. To many Helen
Keller is a living example of the potency of the new education, one of the first pupils of the
school of the future. That is why there is a Helen Keller Day at the Panama-Pacific Exposition.

Here is no dazzling personage, no startling circumstance. A young woman, blind, deaf and
dumb from infancy, has, through the kind of education that is the right of every child, won her
way out of darkness and silence, has found speech and has brought a message of cheer to the
world. Men and women have listened and rejoiced, the[y] have learned to love the brave girl.
They love her for her sweetness and courage, and for the lesson she has taught.

What she has accomplished without sight and hearing suggests the forces that lie dormant in
every human being. And may we not hope that her education foreshadows the results that will
be attained when the minds and senses of normal children are cultivated to their highest
efficiency? If Helen Keller, lacking the two senses that are usually considered the most
important, has become a writer of ability and a leader among women, why should we not expect
the average child, possessed of all its faculties, to attain a far higher ability and knowledge than
the schools of today develop? Many realize that there is something radically wrong with a
system of education that obviously does not educate.

Every child begins life an eager, active little creature, always doing something, always trying to
get something that he wants very much. Even before he can utter a word, succeeds in making
known his desires by cries and grimaces. He invents and devises ways to get the things he
wants. He is the star performer in his little world; he is the horse, the coachman, the policeman,
the robber, the chauffeur, the automobile. He will be anything that requires initiative action.
The one thing he never voluntarily chooses to be is the grown up personage that sits in the car
and does nothing.

Our educational system spoils this fine enthusiasm. We impose the role of passenger upon the
child, and give him no opportunities to exercise his inborn creative faculties. The alluring joy of
creation is not for him. He is deluged with accomplished facts. Naturally, he becomes
mischievous and difficult to manage. He is compelled to defy his teachers in order to save his
soul.

Our schools give no encouragement to assimilation, reflection, observation. They kill

imagination in the bud. They uproot the creative ideals of childhood and plant in their place
worthless ideals of ownership. The fine soul of the child is of far greater importance than high
marks, yet the system causes the pupil to prize high grades above knowledge, and he goes from
the schools into his life work believing always that the score is more important than the game,
possession more praiseworthy than achievement.

We try to model our children after a pattern we have in our own minds. We read and talk a good
deal about evolution, individuality, natural tendencies; but we seem to be unable to fit these
ideas into our system of education. We continue to impose our wills upon children. We deny
them any right to wills and natures of their own. We reverse the known laws of evolution, we
mark out our own path for the child's development and suppress his spontaneous impulses.

We have followed this mechanical method of education for a good many years, with what
result? Our children leave school uneducated, doomed to go through life unreceptive, lacking
imagination and initiative.

In Helen's education she never played the part of ignominious passenger. I early abandoned the
conventional system of lessons; arithmetic at nine, language work at ten and so on. Regular
lessons seemed to benumb my little pupil's natural impulses and self-educating instincts. Slowly
the conviction formed in my mind that it is the child's prerogative to take the initiative, and the
teacher's duty to follow the pupil's adventures and discoveries as intelligently and as
sympathetically as she can. It is a waste of the teacher's time and of the child's energy to make
him read when he wants to build castles with his blocks, to make him do sums in arithmetic
when his whole mind is absorbed in the problem of keeping his boat right side up in the water.
The child will learn more if the teacher lets the arithmetic go and turns her attention to
navigation. This is not always the easiest way for the teacher, but it is the pleasantest and most
profitable for the child.

I made it a rule to change the lesson the moment I noticed that Helen's interest in it flagged, and
to follow her initiative in the choice of the next lesson. At first I had many misgivings as to the
wisdom of what seemed a haphazard course. I had periods of profound melancholy when I
thought that my pupil's mind was not receiving proper discipline. I was haunted by the fear that
because our work was so pleasant, there must be something wrong about it. But, as time went
on, my fears faded before Helen's joyous activity. All day long she was receptive, responsive,
happy. Her delight in everything kept us all at a high pitch of enthusiasm, and enthusiasm
makes work succeed.

It did not occur to me for some time that my experiments and deductions in the teaching of a
deaf, dumb and blind child had any bearing upon the education of normal children. My task
seemed to me a special one, quite apart from general education. I was trying to make the
process of teaching a child that lacked two important senses pleasant to the child, and at the
same time interesting to me. But as my work advanced, I saw that my ideas were proving
successful. People began to talk about Helen's amazing progress, and to compare her mental
development to that of normal children. Here was a little girl, without sight, without hearing,
who was learning faster than most children with all their faculties. It began to dawn on me that
my method, or lack of method, might have a broader application, might be of value to teachers
of children with all their senses.

The more I read the more clearly I saw that my work with Helen offered a partial answer to
many half-articulate doubts, and half-formed hopes of a new conception of education. I realized
that the acceptance of my fundamental idea, that the child should be free, would mean a
revolution in education; that it went beyond the schoolroom and met the dawn of a new
democracy that shall include all men and women and children.

To that wonderful woman, Dr. Marie Montessori, belongs the honor and the everlasting
gratitude of mankind for having systematized these ideas of education and recorded them in her
book, a book that is at once a thrilling human document, a scientific text book, a prophecy and a
torch unto all those whose work it is to teach little children. Dr. Montessori learned, as I
learned, and as every teacher must learn, that only through freedom can individuals develop self
control, self dependence, will power and initiative. There is no education except self-education.
There is no effective discipline except self-discipline. All that parents and teachers can do for
the child is to surround him with right conditions. He will do the rest; and the things he will do
for himself are the only things that really count in his education.

The hope of the future lies in the right education of the child. He must begin with a new outlook
on life. We must awaken in his soul the will toward emancipation. Let us begin now and apply
all that we know, and progressively all that we shall learn to awaken and develop in his soul the
will to be free.

I am convinced that restraint arises from ignorance. Every teacher worthy of the name obtains
results through the spontaneous response of the child. The new education will permit the child
to grow in the environment in which he lives. Real impressions and observations will take the
place of book learning. The child's natural desires and idiosyncrasies will be given wise and
sympathetic direction. In the school of the future the child will be the important thing. If we get
no further than this, we shall have prepared the way for the child's deliverance.

I am aware that the freedom of the child cannot be won without a hard struggle. But our battle
for the freedom of the child is part of the age-long battle of mankind up from serfdom to
freedom; a battle that began in the dateless past and will continue as long as new hopes and new
visions arise in human minds.

This is the lesson that Helen Keller's education has for the world.
2. Question: What do you like best about your teacher?

Answer: Her sense of humor! Her many-sided sympathy! Her passion for service.

Anne's Final Years (1930-1936) and Her

Legacy
National Women's Hall of Fame
In the fall of 2003, Anne Sullivan Macy was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame
in Seneca Falls, New York, an organization that honors in perpetuity women "whose
contributions...have been the greatest value for the development of their country."

Regina Genwright, who was then the Director of the AFB Information Center, received this
award on Anne's behalf. Regina spoke of Anne's accomplishments when she said:

I am thrilled to accept this award on behalf of a woman who was instrumental in breaking
down the educational barriers for people who are deaf, blind and visually impaired and whose
teaching practices are still very much in use today. Like all good teachers Anne's sole aim was
to provide her student with the tools to think clearly and independently.

Photograph of The National Women's Hall of Fame medal awarded to Anne Sullivan
Macy in 2003. A yellow and purple ribbon is attached to a gold color circular medal. The
medal is in the design of the rays of the sun. Anne's name is inscribed on the medal as
are "2003" and "The National Women's Hall of Fame."

The video clip is an excerpted version of the acceptance speech given by Regina
Genwright, the former Director of the AFB Information Center at the National Women's
Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York, in October 2003. The full speech is transcribed
below.

I am thrilled to accept this award on behalf of a woman who was instrumental in

breaking down the educational barriers for people who are deaf, blind, and visually
impaired, and whose teaching practices are still very much in use today.

Like all good teachers, Anne's sole aim was to provide her student with the tools to think
clearly and independently. "The greatest problem I shall have to solve", she said shortly
after having met Helen, "is how to discipline her and to control her without breaking her
spirit. I know she has remarkable powers and I believe that I shall be able to develop
and mold them."

Under Sullivan's tutelage, Helen successfully entered and graduated from Radcliffe
College. This meant that Anne accompanied Helen to all her classes and manually
signed the lessons, as well as the text, into Helen's hand. Sullivan transmitted
information to Helen in just this way for over 50 years, until her death in 1936.

Helen Keller, also inducted into the Hall of Fame, a relentless advocate for the blind and
an inspiration to so many, went on to become one of America's most famous women. I
am very pleased that at last, Anne, whom Helen always addressed as Teacher, is
receiving the recognition that she so justly deserves. Anne Sullivan Macy endured a
hard childhood and persevered in her struggle to receive an education. She instinctively
understood her own self-worth as well as the potential within others. She fought for
Helen's education and career at a time when women were only just beginning to enter
higher education in larger numbers, and certainly none did so with such enormous
physical disabilities.

Anne Sullivan Macy said it best in her valedictorian speech from Perkins in 1886: "Every
man who improves himself is aiding the progress of society and everyone who stands
still holds it back." This award honors a woman whose brilliance, passion, and tenacity
enabled her to overcome her own past as well as to aid so many disadvantaged by their
physical bodies, as well as by their gender or class. For this and her incredible
achievements in education, she remains a role model, not just for me, but for all people.
It is truly an honor and a privilege to be here today as a representative of the American
Foundation for the Blind, and it is with great pleasure that I accept this award on behalf
of Anne Sullivan Macy.

Thank you.