Helen Keller Spanish Lessons Analysis

Discovering the English language may be the most crucial experience one can endure as an American citizen. For Helen Keller, Malcolm X and Christine Marín, it was, and there are extraordinary similarities despite their extremely different situations. Helen Keller was an upper class deaf and blind girl living in America during a time where handicapped people were dehumanized and negatively looked upon. She was taught to read and write three months shy of her seventh birthday by Ms.Sullivan. Before learning these skills, Helen was emotionally detached to the world she lived in, she struggled with communicating her needs which led to tantrums of frustration. Ms.Sullivan taught Keller the concept that words aren't just letters combined, that there is an item connected to that word; She taught her genuine emotion and made Helen feel it; she guided her through a psychological breakthrough that …show more content…
She was falsely accused of turning in a paper she didn't write, simply because she was Mexican. Her professor showed Marín first hand that being a Mexican student meant you are a held to a preconceived standard. In “Spanish Lessons” Christine Marín states “This time the lesson was that my skin color and spanish surname- not my language proficiency and ability in english - severed as criteria to discriminate me” (162). Christine was a self-determined individual who was labeled before she even stepped foot in this world. Like her, I was a victim of prejudice notions for being academically advanced and Mexican, little did my teacher know english was my primary language, she claimed I couldn't write as well as it did so she publicly shamed me in my seventh grade classroom. It's unfair to be discriminated by someone who is supposed to help their