Who Stole Helen Keller?

[polly7]

Published on Tuesday, June 26, 2012 by Common Dreams

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/06/26-1

Who Stole Helen Keller?

by Ruth Shagoury

In these times of vast economic disparities and ecological crisis, children need examples of people throughout history who committed their lives to justice -- to bringing more equality and fairness to the world. Helen Keller, whose birthday we celebrate this month -- June 27th -- could be one of those role models. Instead, textbooks and children's literature distort her life's work, and miss key opportunities to inspire young people to make a difference in the world

.....Several years ago, I investigated and wrote about the image of Helen Keller in picture books for children in an article called "The Truth About Helen Keller," published in Rethinking Schools magazine, and posted at the Zinn Education Project website. According to these picture books, Helen should be remembered for two things after she grew up: her "courage" and her "work with the blind and deaf." Of course, both are true. But none of the many books I reviewed mentioned her work as a socialist and suffragist -- movements that framed most of her life and were connected to her advocacy for people with disabilities. As Keller wrote in 1913, "The way to help the blind is to understand, correct, remove the incapacities and inequalities of our entire civilization."...

......It takes a little more digging, but I encourage parents and educators to turn to resources like the small press book Helen Keller from Ocean Press's series Rebel Lives, which includes excerpts from her writings on disability and class, socialism, women, and war, or the fine young adult biography Helen Keller: Rebellious Spirit by Laurie Lawlor. It's time to share with children Helen Keller's remarkable adult life. As a defiant rebel, she could be a true hero for 21st century activists.

I have to admit, when I see mention of Helen Keller I immediately think of her courage in overcoming disabilities ... she was a remarkable woman in so many more ways.

[Neoma]

1. Eh.

All you have to do is read, "Lies my teacher told me."

[Starry Messenger]

2. "Why Men Need Woman Suffrage"--Helen Keller

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/works/1910s/13_10_17.htm

<snip>

A majority of women that need the vote are wage-earners. A tremendous change has taken place in the industrial world since power machines took the place of hand tools. Men and women have been compelled to adjust themselves to a new system of production and distribution. The machine has been used to exploit the labor of both men and women as it was never exploited before. In the terrific struggle for existence that has resulted from this change women and children suffer even more than men. Indeed, economic pressure drives many women to market their sex.

Yet women have nothing to say about conditions under which they live and toil. Helpless, unheeded, they must endure hardships that lead to misery and degradation. They may not lift a hand to defend themselves against cruel, crippling processes that stunt the body and brain and bring on early death or premature old age.

Working men suffer from the helplessness of working women. They must compete in the same offices and factories with women who are unable to protect themselves with proper laws. They must compete with women who work in unsanitary rooms called homes, work by dim lamps in the night, rocking a cradle with one foot. It is to the interest of all workers to end this stupid, one-sided, one-power arrangement and have suffrage for all.

<snip>

We shall not see the end of capitalism and the triumph of democracy until men and women work together in the solving of their political, social and economic problems. I realize that the vote is only one of many weapons in our fight for the freedom of all. But every means is precious and, equipped with the vote, men and women together will hasten the day when the age-long dream of liberty, equality and brotherhood shall be realized upon earth.

Good article Polly7. Lying by omission is a phrase from the article, it seems to be a hallmark of education about anyone even vaguely radical in the US. I could spend the rest of my life going back over things I learned in school and finding out "Oh, that's what they were really doing."

[obamanut2012]

3. James Loewen wrote about this in one of his books

The "softening" of Keller's accomplishments and life.

How she was a firebrand, a Socialist, a labor "agitator," a huge feminist. But what we learn about her is "The Miracle Worker." The freeing of Helen Keller from the prison her illness locked her in is an incredible miracle engineered by Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller, but it was just the first step.

Helen Keller was totally kickass!

[Gormy Cuss]

4. Wouldn't it be great to have a beyond-the-miracle-worker film about her?

I could see Susan Sarandon backing such a project.

Meanwhile though Gare Thompson should be ashamed of the blatant lie. Simplifying a story for children I understand, but lying to them is just wrong.

[obamanut2012]

5. There was one with Mare Winningham quite a while ago

But it really lacked teeth.

Oh yes! Saradon would back it, as would Angelina Jolie, I bet.

HBO should do one, because they could really do justice to it.

[Lisa D]

8. A film would be awesome.

She really did some amazing things in her life. Too many people only know the beginning of her story.

[stevenleser]

9. Loewen is awesome and yes, Keller was kick ass! nt

[polly7]

10. She really was!

I found another very interesting article on her. I had no idea the FBI had been watching her. I guess probably most back then who championed social causes were probably on some surveillance list.

http://www.zcommunications.org/the-radical-dissent-of-helen-keller-by-peter-dreier

By Peter Dreier

Source: Yes MagazineSaturday, July 14, 2012

Here's what they don't teach: When the blind-deaf visionary learned that poor people were more likely to be blind than others, she set off down a pacifist, socialist path that broke the boundaries of her time—and continues to challenge ours today.

“So long as I confine my activities to social service and the blind, they compliment me extravagantly, calling me 'arch priestess of the sightless,' 'wonder woman,' and a 'modern miracle.' But when it comes to a discussion of poverty, and I maintain that it is the result of wrong economics—that the industrial system under which we live is at the root of much of the physical deafness and blindness in the world—that is a different matter! It is laudable to give aid to the handicapped. Superficial charities make smooth the way of the prosperous; but to advocate that all human beings should have leisure and comfort, the decencies and refinements of life, is a Utopian dream, and one who seriously contemplates its realization indeed must be deaf, dumb, and blind.”

—Helen Keller (letter to Senator Robert La Follette, 1924)

The bronze statue of Helen Keller that sits in the U.S. Capitol shows the blind girl standing at a water pump. It depicts the moment in 1887 when her teacher, Anne Sullivan, spelled “W-A-T-E-R” into one of her 7-year-old pupil's hands while water streamed into the other. This was Keller’s awakening, when she made the connection between the word Sullivan spelled and the tangible substance splashing from the pump, whispering “wah-wah,”—her way of saying “water.” This scene, made famous in the play and film “The Miracle Worker,” has long defined Keller in the public mind as a symbol of courage in the face of overwhelming odds.

Less well known (but no less inspiring) is the fact that Keller, who was born in 1880 and died in 1968, was a lifelong radical who participated in the great movements for social justice of her time. In her investigations into the causes of blindness, she discovered that poor people were more likely than the rich to be blind, and soon connected the mistreatment of the blind to the oppression of workers, women, and other groups, leading her to embrace socialism, feminism, and pacifism. more .....

[obamanut2012]

7. She was also one of the founders of the ACLU