Overcoming Barriers: The Remarkable Story of Laura Bridgman

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Many people do not know a great deal about the teaching of the blind and deaf. There are many well known deaf blind people; one of them is Laura Bridgman. She was born on December 21, 1829, and at 2 years old, she was diagnosed with scarlet fever. This resulted in the loss of her sight, hearing, smell, and almost all taste. The only sense Laura had remaining was her sense of touch (Perkins). She was the first blind and deaf person to learn a language. The way Laura Bridgman was taught is a phenomenal story. As a young child, Laura Bridgman was only able to communicate with her family using a form of very basic sign language. As she grew older, she began to have consistent temper tantrums and it was difficult for her family to control her. Most of the time, Laura only complied with her father. When Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe heard about Laura, he wanted to try to teach her. He …show more content…

He wrote about her in one of his novels, and when it was published, many individuals knew and were interested by Laura’s story. A great amount of visitors began to come to the institution to see Laura and watch her do tasks like read books by feeling raised bumps, write letters, thread needles, and spell sentences into her teacher’s hand. Even though Laura was not fully aware of it, she became very famous and “an example of the human spirit to overcome adversity” (Mahoney). She kept a journal while she lived at Perkins and recorded her thoughts and what she had learned that day. The fact that the only complete sense Laura Bridgman retained after her outbreak of the scarlet fever was touch and she was able to learn English shows how effective Dr. Howe was in developing different methods to teach deaf and blind people. Laura Bridgman was a highly intelligent individual that was able to be taught the English language as well as other subject with only one of her five senses

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