Anne Sullivan
Anne Sullivan
Johanna "Anne" Mansfield Sullivan Macy, better known as Anne Sullivan, was an American teacher, best known for being the instructor and lifelong companion of Helen Keller. At the age of five, she contracted trachoma, a highly contagious eye disease, which left her blind and without reading or writing skills. She received her education as a student of the Perkins School for the Blind where upon graduation she became a teacher to Keller when she was 20...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTeacher
Date of Birth14 April 1866
CountryUnited States of America
It's a great mistake, I think, to put children off with falsehoods and nonsense, when their growing powers of observation and discrimination excite in them a desire to know about things.
Why, it is as easy to teach the name of an idea, if it is clearly formulated in the child's mind, as to teach the name of an object.
If the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less showily. Let him go and come freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself.
Obedience is the gateway through which knowledge, yes, and love, too, enter the mind of the child.
The processes of teaching the child that everything cannot be as he wills it are apt to be painful both to him and to his teacher.
Too often, I think, children are required to write before they have anything to say. Teach them to think and read and talk without self-repression, and they will write because they cannot help it.
I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better , if less "showily." Let him come and go freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself... Teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experiences.
Certain periods in history suddenly lift humanity to an observation point where a clear light falls upon a world previously dark.
We all like stories that make us cry. It's so nice to feel sad when you've nothing in particular to feel sad about.
Our material eye cannot see that a stupid chauvinism is driving us from one noisy, destructive, futile agitation to another.
The truth is not wonderful enough to suit the newspapers; so they enlarge upon it, and invent ridiculous embellishments.
We have no firm hold on any knowledge or philosophy that can lift us out of our difficulties.
I cannot explain it; but when difficulties arise, I am not perplexed or doubtful. I know how to meet them.
Every renaissance comes to the world with a cry, the cry of the human spirit to be free.