And there were books describing her as an adult. They just managed to downplay
the politics that were inconvenient.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Thursday, December 24, 2020 10:36 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Hellen Keller, American Radical
Exactly so, Miriam.
Helen Keller was such a unique person that she could not be ignored.
So they did the nex best thing. They sanitized her. We were treated to that
wonderful, brave little blind girl and her dedicated teacher, Ann Sullivan.
Long ago I read some Op Ed guy telling us that because of her limited access to
print information, Keller had been duped by the Communists. In fact, she was
probably better read than the nameless fellow who felt the need to trash
someone he knew nothing about.
Being the son of a Marxist, I'd read several accounts of Helen Keller, as well
as several of her articles. I don't think I ever read one of her books.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/23/20, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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/
