Director Arthur Penn’s film about a once-blind governess, Annie Sullivan (Anne Bancroft), transforming a troublesome deaf-blind child, Helen Keller (Patty Duke), into a curious, intelligent learner has been retold so regularly on- and off-screen that it doesn’t bear repeating. Suffice it to say that it’s an outstanding movie.
Cynical self-improvement gurus make millions by peddling gimmicks about winning friends, influencing people, and finding “success.” Penn reveals the anatomy of Helen and Anne’s bruising learning-teaching sessions; his film redefines learning not as unquestioning obedience but as understanding.
By showing what makes a good teacher, Penn shows what makes a good student not just in classrooms but also in life. That isn’t about mere subject mastery (becoming smarter) but about self-mastery (becoming a better person).
A Family Divided
In a household seething with impatience over Helen’s tantrums, her mother Kate stays defiantly empathetic. She insists that the rowdy Helen be tutored by a specialist teacher; Helen’s father Arthur and half-brother James would rather she be “put away.”Kate’s love makes her supersighted, seeing in Helen what others can’t. She sees intent, while others see Helen’s behavior as arbitrary actions with consequences. That’s the first miracle, well before Annie shows up. Miraculously, against his instincts, Arthur trusts Kate’s love and permits a governess to homeschool Helen.
A Good Teacher
Annie outranks Helen in age, education, and experience. Yet she approaches Helen with humility, with a desire to fathom intent—from her eyes, hands, and lips. To teach a child, Annie doesn’t mind being taught by one.When something noble is underway, naysayers are generally wrong. But they’re rarely harmless. Anne recognizes this as she tries to teach Helen. She shuts James out of the room when he harangues them midsession. If it’s constructive, criticism is welcome. If it’s only to tear down something sublime, then it must be silenced or at the very least shut out.
Annie lacks the entitlement of teachers who expect all children to learn at the same pace and reach the same level of mastery. She meets Helen on her terms, on her ground. Then Annie slowly but firmly raises the bar and keeps raising it until Helen’s floated far above where she’d languished for years.
Indulgence
Annie is furious that the family indulges Helen with food whenever she throws a tantrum, supposedly to pacify her. Rewarding bad behavior only incentivizes it. In one 15-minute dinner table scene, Annie has to force Helen to unlearn what she’s learned since childhood. Annie’s saying that love means only one thing: willing the good of the other. Pandering isn’t love; it’s a lie. It’s selfish because it seeks only to please.Annie sees in Helen even more than the Kellers do. She persuades them that their pampering is a form of lying to Helen. She begs them to stand between that lie and Helen. She insists that the only way they can respect Helen is to respect themselves first, and expect her to be as polite and as well-mannered as the rest of the family. Helen’s handicap isn’t deafness or blindness, according to Annie. “You are so sorry for her. You’ve kept her like a pet. Why, even a dog you housebreak," Annie says.
To Annie, a high standard of excellence is a form of worship, of self-love. It salutes the loftiness of the human spirit. Even animals can be taught to “fetch.” But with humans, Annie insists, true learning ought to be about more than mastering table manners or the alphabet, as she says: “Obedience without understanding is ... blindness.”
As for giving up, Annie dismisses it: “It’s my idea of ... original sin.” Instead, she thunders: “I treat her like a seeing child because I ask her to see. I expect her to see!”
