Showing posts with label deaf. Show all posts
Showing posts with label deaf. Show all posts

June 27 - Happy Birthday, Helen Keller

Posted on June 27, 2021

This is an update of my post published on June 27, 2010:




Born in Alabama on this day in 1880, Helen Keller became blind and deaf while she was just a baby, due to an illness. Since she was unable to see or hear, she didn't learn to talk. Thanks to her remarkable teacher, Anne Sullivan, Keller learned to communicate by touch in sign language. She learned to read and write in Braille, and later she learned to speak. Eventually she learned five languages!



From those difficult childhood beginnings, would you have guessed that Keller's Wikipedia bio would list her as a college grad (Radcliffe College, which is part of Harvard University), the author of 14 books, an activist (working on causes as varied as rights for those with disabilities, women's suffrage, labor rights, and world peace), and a lecturer who traveled to 35 nations in the world? Wow! 



Keller was a supporter of the NAACP and one of the original members of the ACLU; she wrote an autobiography and has been the subject of movies and plays. Her birthplace in Alabama is a museum, her birthday is celebrated in Pennsylvania, she is a member of both the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame and the Alabama Writers' Hall of Fame, and she appears on the Alabama state quarter!




When I was checking to see if Helen Keller really said the quotes attributed to her, I noticed some huge raves from some really important peeps:

U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill called Keller "the greatest woman of our age." Albert Einstein told her "I have been a great admirer of you always." 

Ultra-famous author Mark Twain said TO Keller, "I am charmed with your book - enchanted!" And Twain said ABOUT Keller that she was on of the two greatest characters in the 19th Century - alongside Napoleon Bonaparte! He went on, "Napoleon tried to conquer the world by physical force and failed. Helen tried to conquer the world by power of mind — and succeeded!"




Also on this date:











(Last Sunday in June)



(Last Sunday in June)





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May 8 - Happy Birthday, Henry Baker

Posted on May 8, 2021


This is an update of my post published on Mary 8, 2010:

On this day in 1698, Henry Baker was born in London, England.


 He is known for three things:
(1) Baker developed a new way to teach the hearing- and speech-impaired (known then as “the deaf and dumb”). He was able to make a lot of money with his system - which he kept strictly secret.

(2) Baker was the son-in-law of the writer Daniel Defoe. Defoe wrote a lot of things, but nowadays he is most famous for the book Robinson Crusoe, which is considered by many to be the first novel written in English.
(Why only considered the first novel by many, and not all? Because different scholars have different definitions of the word novel.)
Robinson Crusoe is a castaway on a remote tropical island who meets Native Americans and mutineers and has all sorts of adventures before finally being rescued—28 years later!
Baker used Defoe's name and fame when he launched a weekly publication filled with essays; it was called the Universal Spectator and Weekly Journal, and it ran about 18 years, with more than 900 issues.

 

(3) Baker introduced the microscope to the general public with several publications, including The Microscope Made Easy.


Science popularizers are important because they increase interest in and understanding of science in the general population, and THAT often encourages young people to study science. 
Also, Baker won a medal for his microscopical observations of salt crystals.

Baker's interests were varied. We can celebrate him by trying a variety of activities ourselves.
(1) Have you ever wanted to learn sign language? ASL (American Sign Language) and BSL (British Sign Language) are complete languages, each with its own grammar.

 

(By the way, the two languages are quite different.)
Here are some resources to try them out: an ASL video dictionary and text dictionary ...and ASL lessons here and here.
For BSL: an introductory video, short dictionary and resources.

 

(2) Here is a super short summary of Robinson Crusoe. And here is the complete version, free online. WARNING: like many old books, this book is horribly racist.
What would you do if you were shipwrecked? Write a story. Maybe you can get rescued in 28 days, rather than 28 years!


(3) Play a "guess what it is?" with microscopic looks at ordinary items. 
If you have a microscope, look at all sorts of things from a human hair to a drop of pond water, from a thread to a leaf.
Above, a human hair; below, wing of a fly 

Above, pond water; below, plant cells

If you don't have access to a microscope, check out this virtual microscope website.
Here's a virtual electron scanning microscope.
Above, butterfly scales; below, an ant's head


 


Also on this date:


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April 15 - National ASL Day

Posted on April 15, 2020



Today's national day is about American Sign Language, which is the most-used sign language in North America and to some extent the world. Just as English is a very common second language around the world, serving as a lingua franca (common language) for people from, say, Canada, China, Hungary, South Africa, and Egypt - ASL serves as a lingua franca for deaf people, because people whose first language is, say, French Sign Language (LSF), Libras (the sign language used in Brazil), Japanese Sign Language, and so forth often learn ASL as their second language.


ASL probably began in the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut. It was created by combining features of French Sign Language, various village sign languages (which developed in areas where there were a lot of people born deaf - because some kinds of deafness can be passed down from generation to generation), and home sign systems created by families with one or more deaf members. 

It's so much better for deaf people to learn a sign language that can extend outside of their own family or village! It opens up much wider avenues of socializing and education and job opportunities.



In addition to being a first language for deaf people throughout the U.S. and English-speaking Canada, ASL is the first language of deaf people in many other nations as varied as Hong Kong, Bolivia, Cambodia, Gabon, the Philippines, Chad, Jamaica, and more. Plus, ASL-based sign languages are used in many other nations in West Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. 


ASL, like other sign languages, has an alphabet for fingerspelling names and new vocabulary, signs for individual words and some phrases, and grammar (a set of rules for the correct signing - rules that talk about word order, identifying the topic of a sentence, verb tenses, and so forth).

Here are some resources for learning ASL.



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