Helen Keller

Well, I know we did this last week in class, but I still had some comments about the Helen Keller article. I wanted to wait through the weekend because I was going home and i wanted to see how much my family knew about Helen Keller. My mom did know she was a socialist, but she did not realize how active Helen Keller was in the political world. I view my mom to be a very educated woman, so when she was still learning new things about Helen Keller and her being much older than me, it struck me even harder as to how society wants people to only learn what they want people to learn. To have her life, not so much kept hidden, but that there are not that many books about her life after her childhood years. It seems that she has accomplished so much more than overcoming her blindness and deafness. She was able to public speak, not knowing what she sounds like at all. Now, just think about that for a second. I think that would be so difficult, especially since its public speaking which happens to be the number one fear among humans, the second being death. She was, as was said in class a lot, "going against the grain" which not a lot of people are doing today, or at least that I know of. I think that in elementary it is a great idea to introduce Helen Keller and show the challenges she has overcome, but after the kids learn about her childhood I think that the education of her life should continue, whether it be in upper elementary or in middle school and even high school. I have known about Helen Keller for most of my life, but I never knew more than half of what she has accomplished in her long life. I wish that schools would further children's knowledge of her, because she fought for what she believed in and for most people, that is a trait that does not happen too often.