Sunday, September 16, 2018

Prioritizing/Erasing History




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-

2 comments:

  1. 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.

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  2. I 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.

    Thanks again for reading, Michael.

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