Hellen Keller wasn't staging a moon landing

What should be the buy-before date for Bologna?

I expect that most readers of Special Education Today have at least a passing familiarity with the story of Helen Keller. Here’s how the Wikipedia entry about Ms. Keller begins¹:

Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, disability rights advocate, political activist and lecturer. Born in West Tuscumbia, Alabama, she lost her sight and her hearing after a bout of illness when she was 19 months old. She then communicated primarily using home signs until the age of seven, when she met her first teacher and life-long companion Anne Sullivan. Sullivan taught Keller language, including reading and writing. After an education at both specialist and mainstream schools, Keller attended Radcliffe College of Harvard University and became the first deafblind person in the United States to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.

I heard what was essentially that story during my childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. It was the narrative I continued to encounter during my professional career as a special educator.

So, imagine my surprise when I discovered that in the 20-teens and 2020s—when I was in my 70s—people were arguing that Helen Keller was faking her disability, that she didn’t actually do the things she is said to have done (e.g., write books), and that she didn’t even actually exist. A meme was circulating on the Intertubes (apparently especially on TikTok) promoting theories doubting the existence of Helen Keller.

Say what!

Fortunately, I don’t have to debunk this theory. Other journalists were way ahead of me on it. Take any two (or all three) of these stories for your discomfort and call your doctor in the morning:

• Audra Schroeder chased the history of the meme (and popped a few bubbles along the way) in her piece of 7 January 2021, “What the heck is going on with TikTok and Helen Keller? Teens say the videos are just ‘jokes,’ but the theory has been around for months” for the DailyDot.

• Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett of The Guardian, on 7 January 2021, exposed a lot of the nonsense about the Helen Keller-is-fake meme in her article, “Helen Keller: why is a TikTok conspiracy theory undermining her story? Despite her record as a writer and activist, what may have begun as a joke has gained traction, and should make us ask questions that go beyond the credulity of Gen Z.”

• Writing for Slate on 26 February 2021, Rebecca Onion provided an analysis that captures commonalities in the posts of those who perpetuate the misbeliefs. Ms. Onion’s article is entitled, “Did Helen Keller Really ‘Do All That?’ A troubling TikTok conspiracy theory questions whether Keller was ‘real.’”

If these accounts seem insufficient to you, please “do your own research,” as the popular phrase has it. Along the way, I think you’re likely to encounter many articles that make points quite similar to those Ms. Onion described.

A few other sources

In 1905, Sarah Fuller, who was at that time the principal of the Horace Mann School for the Deaf, recorded her impressions of meeting Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan in 1890. Here are the first few lines of statement:

The first intimation to me of Helen Keller's desire to speak was on the 26th of March, 1890, when her teacher, Miss Sullivan, called upon me with her and asked me to help her to teach Helen to speak; for, said she, “Helen has spelled upon her fingers, “I must speak.” She was then within three months of being ten years old. Some two years before, accompanied by her mother, Mr. Anagnos and Miss Sullivan, she had visited the Horace Mann School for the Deaf, when her ready use of English, and her interest in the children, had suggested to me that she could be taught to speak. But it was not then thought wise to allow her to use her vocal organs. Now, how ever, that the attempt was to be made, I gladly undertook the work.

In her coverage for Slate, Ms. Onion quotes extensively from an interview with Catherine Kudlick, a historian at San Francisco State University and Laboratory ICT University Paris who focuses on disability. Ms. Onion wrote,

And so, the TikTok conspiracy, abhorrent as it is, may be what you get when a complex person becomes a heroic figurehead that stands in for an entire group of otherwise-invisible Americans. “We’re in a society right now that’s questioning heroes in every way,” Kudlick said. “We’re investigating them, and seeing they’re not what we thought, or what we were taught. So why wouldn’t somebody like Helen Keller be put through that?”

“She’s always taught as a moral lesson,” Nielsen said. “She’s never included in the discussion of civil rights history, the history of education. We don’t put her in context of special education laws and their development, civil rights of people with disabilities.” In other words, she really did “do all that.” We just need to do a better job of teaching and remembering it.

Consider these other sources, too, please: The American Foundation for the Blind biography of Helen Keller; the movie, The Miracle Worker²; and the “Helen Keller” entry on History.

John’s addition

I find this to be a discouraging story about the extent to which contemporary education teaches students to examine ideas. Just as one should feel her Skeptical Antennae stiffen when someone says something preposterous, one should doubt her own ridiculous thoughts. Sure, I can imagine a lot scenes in which Wile E. Cayote falls off a cliff, but I remember that those are scenes I imagine (or saw in a cartoon; they are not real.

But, an especially discouraging part to me is that such nonsense denies the incredible efforts of special educators like Anne Sullivan, Sarah Fuller, and others. We gotta keep pony poop from sullying the beneficial and caring works of our colleagues.

Referenece

Fuller, S. (1905). How Helen Keller was taught speech (No. 47). Gibson Brothers. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=2rFgHx5RMXEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=helen+keller+speech&ots=P7V2jYJIeu&sig=IWvz9fLyejYGy4aoZtuaQv67ruM

Footnote

1. At least, this is a direct quote of the opening paragraph of the Wikipedia entry as of 30 January 2025. Because Wikipedia publishes crowd-sourced content, the details may have changed by the time that a future reader of SET may compare this quote with the then current lede. I suspect that it will have changed little because Wikipedia has rules and guidelines for editing. Still, who knows?

2. Yes, I know. The Miracle Worker is a movie, and they are works of imagination, slant, and fiction. Still, it’s a pretty compelling account.