Erasing Helen Keller & Our Collective Historical Blindness and Deafness
Several days ago, the Texas State Board of Education made headlines when they announced that Helen Keller may be removed from the curriculum. While not banned her from the curriculum, it would no longer be mandatory to teach about her. The backlash was swift, angry, and from a historical perspective, completely silly. Nearly all of the complainants lamented the loss of a figure whose story has inspired countless children, demonstrating the idea that any difficulty can be overcome with the right help and work ethic. Sadly, almost none of the complainants seemed to be aware that the real Helen Keller was erased long ago. The figure they want to see restored is barely a shadow of the powerful advocate that died 50 years ago. Perhaps it is time that we had a real discussion about Helen Keller.
At some point, almost every child in America learns the heroic story of Helen Keller. Becoming deaf and blind (due to a bout of scarlet fever) at an extremely early age, she went on to learn to read, write, and speak. However, our students are almost never told what she chose to write and speak about! This basic biography, and a quick discussion hammering home the moral of the story, is the extent to which Americans learn about Keller. Almost no one ever learns that Helen Keller was an avowed leftist and a prominent member of the Socialist Party. According to a Time.com article in 2015, “She joined the Socialist party in 1909, and became an IWW member shortly thereafter, supporting strikes, walking picket lines, giving lecture tours and writing articles for publications like The Liberator.” A quick look at some of her speeches and writings makes it clear that she would be considered far to the left of any major political figure of 2018, including Bernie Sanders.
During the First World War, Keller, like many other Socialists, was an outspoken opponent of American involvement, attacking the very notion of war and highlighting its connections to capitalism:
“The only moral virtue of war is that it compels the capitalist system to look itself in the face and admit it is a fraud…. Nothing is to be gained by the workers from war. They suffer all the miseries, while the rulers reap the rewards… The army they are supposed to raise can be used to break strikes as well as defend the people.”
Her criticism was aimed not just at war, but at the American system in general:
“This great republic is a mockery of freedom as long as you are doomed to dig and sweat to earn a miserable living while the masters enjoy the fruit of your toil. What have you to fight for? National independence? That means the masters’ independence. The laws that send you to jail when you demand better living conditions? The flag? Does it wave over a country where you are free and have a home, or does it rather symbolize a country that meets you with clenched fists when you strike for better wages and shorter hours? Will you fight for your masters’ religion which teaches you to obey them even when they tell you to kill one another?”
There are countless quotes like this that can be given to highlight the views of the real Helen Keller, the one you were not taught about in school. A quick google search of the first 10 news stories and op-eds about this topic, including local and national news sites, reveals the degree to which the American media and the public have become historical deaf and blind. Not one mentions her radicalism, socialist affiliation, or anti-war stance. The closest was a Washington Post op-ed that makes a single reference to her advocacy for “workers’ advancement,” though it lists it in such a way to minimize its importance when compared to her work for the deaf and blind.
While many Americans will lament the removal of Helen Keller from social studies curriculums, the reality is that what’s been lost is a fraud, a lie by omission. The real Helen Keller is so much more powerful and interesting than the whitewashed version that we have been presented. As George Orwell pointed out so perfectly in 1984, “he who controls the past controls the future and he who controls the present controls the past.” A version of Helen Keller that questions the very core of how this country is run is not useful for those who benefit from the status quo and influence our public school curriculums, so it is erased and replaced by a pleasant fiction that reinforces one of the central myths of Americanism — the idea that hard work will inevitably lead to success. By extension, those who are unsuccessful have only themselves to blame.
Keller, like most great Americans, was a dissident voice against status quo. She has been turned into almost the exact opposite. We must fight for a fuller version of our history to be taught in classrooms from coast to coast, not just in Texas. More than just making sure that her name is restored to the curriculum, we need to restore Helen Keller to her true place in American history by remembering her work to uplift the poor, create a economy that works for the many rather than not the few, and to end American militarism.
