Helen Keller

Helen Keller is considered a "little person" in history, and is therefore not given much space in textbooks; yet teachers love to talk about her. Keller is most often portrayed as a blind and deaf girl who overcame her incredible physical handicaps, and she is conveyed as an inspiration to generations of schoolchildren. Most students know the story of Keller at the water pump with Ann Sullivan, but any real details of her life are unknown. The message that is conveyed to us through Keller and Sullivan is that determination and cooperation are magical powers. According to Leowen’s study of textbooks, we find that these women are a constant reminder to us of "the wonder of the world around us and how much people owe those who taught us what it means, for there is no person that is unworthy or incapable of being helped, and the greatest service any person can make us is to help another reach true potential."

All that is told of her life are unclimactic stories and generic information. Historians and filmmakers have disregarded her actual biography and have eliminated the lessons she specifically asked us to learn from it. As a result, Keller, "who struggled so bravely to find her voice, has been made mute by history" (Lies My Teacher Told Me, 1997).

The truth about Helen Keller (link= http://www.hki.org/helen.html), which most people do not know, is that she was a radical socialist. She graduated with honors from Radcliffe College in 1904, and before graduating, had become a social radical, joining the socialist party of Massachusetts in 1909. Eventually, she moved to the left of the socialist party and became a Wobbly, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). She avidly studied about the blind and discovered that many people were made blind through terrible working conditions. Furthermore, she discovered that poor people were more likely to be working in these terrible conditions, and often lacked sufficient medical coverage. As a result, Keller learned how the social class system controls people’s opportunities in life. In her work as a suffragette and a socialist, Helen demanded equal rights for women and better pay for working class people. Furthermore, she helped establish the American Foundation for the Blind in order to provide better services to people with impaired vision.

Unfortunately, people were outraged at Helen Keller’s conversion to socialism. Those who had previously applauded her courage and accomplishment now focused on her handicaps, claiming that she didn’t have the facilities to make the "right" decision. As a result, the true accomplishments of her life have been discarded and ignored, which has equated to an incomplete account or a truly amazing woman. She was reduced to an inspiration for people to overcome disabilities, instead of being shown for her true accomplishments as a vibrant political figure catalyzing social change.