Afternoon,
Fam…
So, I had a
couple things line up to talk about until Joey shared this
shit on my FB feed.
Helen Keller
(1880-1968), who contracted an illness at 19 months that left her deaf/blind,
had her core support system that knew her self-taught signs she used to express
her needs and wants as well as knowing who was in the room with her by the
vibrations of peoples’ footfalls, but her life was very limited outside of that
fam support system until the fam met Anne Sullivan, who was blind herself, took
Keller under her tutelage, teaching her to sign spell things, which was a slow
process until they had a breakthrough with the word “water”. The snowball went from there. Keller’d go on to become an author, political
activist, and lecturer as well as being the first deaf/blind person to earn a Bachelor
of Arts degree as well as honorary doctoral degrees from Temple and Harvard. She was famously portrayed by Patty Duke in The Miracle Worker (’62) opposite Anne
Bancroft as Anne Sullivan.
50 years
later, Texas wants to essentially erase her from curriculum, WTFH, MAN! Does Texas think so little of their crips to
whitewash their accomplishments so that future gens don’t learn and have a role
model? NOT COOL, TEXAS, NOT COOL!
Be good to
each other.
-J-
I read about the panel that was trying to streamline the curriculum. They seem like a bunch that need to go back to school themselves.
ReplyDeleteI agree, just because someone has a say so, doesn't make it right to lessen someone's place in history. These people're going to go down in history for their actions, and it won't paint them in a very good light while people who know about trailblazers like Helen Keller will go on being revered despite maybe not getting the class time she deserves.
ReplyDeleteThanks again for reading, Michael.