Early 20th century writer, journalist, and activist, who learned how to read, write, and even talk in spite of being born deaf and dumb. Keller spent most of her adult life fighting for socialist causes—she supported the Soviet Union in its early days, and challenged the American government to provide fair compensation for its workers. Loewen cites Keller—whose childhood is familiar to most American students, but whose adult career is utterly foreign to most—as an example of how history textbooks gloss over the most controversial, and exciting, facts about the lives of historical figures.
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Helen Keller Character Timeline in Lies My Teacher Told Me
The timeline below shows where the character Helen Keller appears in Lies My Teacher Told Me. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1: Handicapped by History
Loewen begins by looking at two familiar figures from history textbooks: Helen Keller and Woodrow Wilson. Almost every American student knows that Keller was deaf and blind, yet...
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...statement, because sex, religion, and social class are vital aspects of history. By leaving out Keller’s lifelong war against the American class system, for example, textbooks decontextualize Keller’s life work and...
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Ironically, by portraying Keller, Wilson, and other historical figures as unambiguously heroic, textbooks make student less impressed with these...
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