Children's Cliparts

The World Through Three Senses


I am not a teacher or an educator, but I have always believed that infants should be taught as soon as possible before they speak, to notice objects pretty or delightful or unusual. I have noted the wholesome effect upon a baby of fixing his eyes upon a pleasing colour or a delicately carved shell, listening to music that soothes or enchants him, touching a face he loves or smelling a flower to which he smiles.

If the mother puts as much gentle art into this delicate fostering of all his physical powers as she does into the task of preserving his health, her reward will be past calculating. The child's five senses are the faithful fairies who, if cherished and heeded, will surrender to him their priceless tokens of royalty -- the splendor at the rainbow's end, the seven-league books of imagination, lovely dreams fulfilled. He will always be charged or comforted by sky, earth and sea. Not only will he reach a well-ordered stewardship of his senses, he will also have the best chance of spiritual maturity.

For there is, I am convinced, a correspondence between the powers of the body and those of the spirit, and when the five senses -- or whatever of them there are -- serve as entrances into an inner world, the individual attains his or her fullest capacity of pleasure as well as self-mastery. Every person, every group thus excellently equipped for living is the greatest possible contribution to humanity. That is why I like to celebrate the accomplishments of the handicapped whom necessity drives to us all the faculties that remains. They show that normal beings can and should do with a complete set of faculties.

Once parents and teachers realize the tremendous potencies of good folded up in sense-life and set about developing them in children, they will confer upon the coming generation a blessing that will carry through untold ages its multiplying harvests of alertness, strength and beauty of life.

By Helen Keller