If a preface is a light which should serve to illumine the contents of
a volume, I choose, not words, but human figures to illustrate this
little book intended to enter families where children are growing up.
I therefore recall here, as an eloquent symbol, Helen Keller and Mrs.
Anne Sullivan Macy, who are, by their example, both teachers to
myself--and, before the world, living documents of the miracle in
education.
In fact, Helen Keller is a marvelous example of the phenomenon common
to all human beings: the possibility of the liberation of the
imprisoned spirit of man by the education of the senses. Here lies the
basis of the method of education of which the book gives a succinct
idea.
If one only of the senses sufficed to make of Helen Keller a woman of
exceptional culture and a writer, who better than she proves the
potency of that method of education which builds on the senses? If
Helen Keller attained through exquisite natural gifts to an elevated
conception of the world, who better than she proves that in the
inmost self of man lies the spirit ready to reveal itself?
Helen, clasp to your heart these little children, since they, above
all others, will understand you. They are your younger brothers: when,
with bandaged eyes and in silence, they touch with their little hands,
profound impressions rise in their consciousness, and they exclaim
with a new form of happiness: "I see with my hands." They alone, then,
can fully understand the drama of the mysterious privilege your soul
has known. When, in darkness and in silence, their spirit left free to
expand, their intellectual energy redoubled, they become able to read
and write without having learnt, almost as it were by intuition, they,
only they, can understand in part the ecstasy which God granted you on
the luminous path of learning.