How Did She Learn to Read?
For the first time in her life, my 8 yo daughter was fascinated by something taught at school: Helen Keller. That there was a means for the blind to read (Braille) blew her away. An assignment to write 2 pages on Braille helped. She got to see how Braille script looked and that there is Braille script for languages like Hindi too, not just English. (The fact that Braille was originally devised to enable soldiers to read in the dark without turning on candles/lanterns and giving away their positions to the enemy was of interest to me, not so much to her). But my daughter’s interest wasn’t done yet. A week later, she came and asked me, “How did Helen Keller learn to read?”. Via Braille, remember? “I mean, how did she learn which symbols mapped to a particular letter?” As she moved her hand over the raised symbols of Braille, they must have told which letter those symbols mapped to. Then came her question that knocked me out: “But she was deaf. So how could they tell her anythi