Helen Keller and Heroification

Helen Keller is portrayed in our history textbooks as the blind and deaf girl who overcame overwhelming obstacles to write and inspire others.  All our history textbooks and teachers have told that she was this wonderful woman who seems to have done no wrong.  Thus begins the hero making of Helen Keller.

We think of her only as the blind and deaf girl who did great things.  What did she do?  No students actually know what she did when Loewen asked them.  In reality she was a radical socialist that loved the USSR.  She caused a lot of controversy in her time for her stance on socialism.

But no students know this because heroification distorts her life so much.  George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Woodrow Wilson, and many others have also been made into heroes.  There are some very real life lessons to draw from Keller and the others, but heroification so distorts their lives that you can't draw the real life lessons.  Instead of getting to know the facts of these people's lives, we glorify them and even justify their actions for them.

Loewen thinks we should present all the facts of their lives and make our own conclusions.  I completely agree with him on this point.  Students should be presented facts about them, not make them out to be these perfect human beings.