What is interesting, is that I've read several books about Helen Keller and I
don't remember the left wing politics being emphasized, or even included, in
any of them.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, December 23, 2020 7:38 PM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Hellen Keller, American Radical
Co-Founding the ACLU, Fighting for Labor Rights and Other Helen Keller
Accomplishments Students Don't Learn in School
BY OLIVIA B. WAXMAN AND VIDEO BY ARPITA ANEJA
UPDATED: DECEMBER 15, 2020 3:26 PM EST | ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED:
DECEMBER 15, 2020 10:43 AM EST
While the world marked International Day of Persons with Disabilities on Dec.
3, the history of people with disabilities is still not fully taught in
schools. In the U.S., if American schoolchildren learn about any person with
disabilities, they learn that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt once had
polio and used a wheelchair in office, and they learn about Deafblind activist
Helen Keller.
Most students learn that Keller, born June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Ala., was
left deaf and blind after contracting a high fever at 19 months, and that her
teacher Anne Sullivan taught her braille, lip-reading, finger spelling and
eventually, how to speak. Students may watch the Oscar-winning 1962 movie The
Miracle Worker, which depicts these milestones as miraculous. Keller has become
a worldwide symbol for children to overcome any obstacle. At the U.S. Capitol,
there is even a bronze statue of 7-year-old Keller at a water pump, inspired by
the movie’s depiction of a real milestone in Keller’s life in which she
recognizes water coming out of the pump after Sullivan spells the word “water”
into the youngster’s hand. However, there is still a great deal about her life
and her accomplishments that many people don’t know.
What scholars of disability point out is that when students learn about Helen
Keller, they often learn about her efforts to communicate as a child, and not
about the work she did as an adult. This limited instruction has implications
for how students perceive people with disabilities.
If students learn about any of Keller’s accomplishments as an adult, they learn
that she became the first Deafblind graduate of Radcliffe College (now Harvard
University) in 1904, and worked for American Foundation for the Blind from the
mid-1920s until her death in 1968, advocating for schools for the blind and
braille reading materials.
But they don’t learn that she co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union in
1920; that she was an early supporter of the NAACP, and an opponent of
lynchings; that she was an early proponent of birth control.
Sascha Cohen, who teaches American Studies at Brandeis University, and wrote
the 2015 TIME article “Helen Keller’s Forgotten Radicalism”, argues that
Keller’s involvement in workers’ rights can help students understand the roots
of the workers’ rights and inequality issues that persist today: “The
Progressive Era when she was sort of working politically in different
organizations was a period of rapid industrialization and so there were these
new conditions in which workers were subjected to this sort of heightened
inequality and even danger and risk physically. So she pointed out that a lot
of times people went blind from accidents on the shop floor. She saw this real
kind of imbalance in power between the workers…and the sort of what we would
call the 1% or the very few owners and managers at the top who were exploiting
the workers.”
Some of the reason schools don’t teach much about Keller’s adult life is
because she was involved in groups that have been perceived as too radical
throughout American history. She was a member of the Socialist Party, and
corresponded with Eugene Debs, the party’s most prominent member and a
five-time presidential candidate. She also read Marx, and her associations with
all of these far-left groups landed her on the radar of the FBI, which
monitored her for ties to the Communist Party.
However, to some Black disability rights activists, like Anita Cameron, Helen
Keller is not radical at all, “just another, despite disabilities, privileged
white person,” and yet another example of history telling the story of
privileged white Americans. Critics of Helen Keller cite her writings that
reflected the popularity of now-dated eugenics theories and her friendship with
one of the movement’s supporters Alexander Graham Bell. The American Foundation
for the Blind archivist Helen Selsdon says Keller “moved away from that
position.”
People with disabilities and activists are pushing for more education on
important contributions to U.S. history by people of disabilities, such as the
Capitol Crawl. On Mar. 12, 1990, Cameron and dozens of disabled people climbed
up the steps of U.S. Capitol to urge the passage of the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA). It was considered a moment that raised awareness and
helped get the law passed four months later, but one rarely included in public
school education.
Thirty years later, one in four Americans have a disability. At least three
other states have made efforts to incorporate disability history into school
curricula. It’s the law in California and New Jersey to teach the contributions
of people with disabilities, and Massachusetts guidelines urge state educators
to do the same.
In Sep. 2018, the Texas Board of Education approved a draft of changes to state
social studies standards, which included the removal of some historical
figures, such as Helen Keller. Shortly after the board opened the draft for
public comment, Haben Girma, a Black disability rights lawyer and the first
Deafblind Harvard Law School graduate, was one of many who spoke out on the
importance of teaching Helen Keller.
Girma argued that if Keller’s life is not taught, students might not learn
about any history-makers with disabilities. Two months later, the Texas Board
of Education approved a revised draft with Keller’s name back in the standards.
Girma agrees that more should be done to teach the full life and career of
Helen Keller, and encourages students to read more of her writings to learn
more about who she was as an adult. Keller wrote 14 books and more than 475
speeches and essays.
“Since society only portrays Helen Keller as a little girl, a lot of people
subconsciously learn to infantilize disabled adults. And I’ve been treated like
a child. Many disabled adults have been treated like children,” Girma says.
“That makes it difficult to get a job, to be treated with respect, to get good
quality education and healthcare as an adult.”
Or just look back at what Keller herself articulated in her 1926 memoir My Key
of Life about the impact of inclusive education: “The highest result of
education is tolerance.”
https://time.com/5918660/helen-keller-disability-history/
