But there is much more to Helen Keller’s history than a brilliant deaf and blind woman who surmounted incredible obstacles. Helen Keller worked throughout her long life to achieve social change; she was an integral part of many important social movements in the 20th century. She was a socialist who believed she was able to overcome many of the difficulties in her life because of her class privilege — a privilege not shared by most of her blind or deaf contemporaries. “I owed my success partly to the advantages of my birth and environment,” she said. “I have learned that the power to rise is not within the reach of everyone.”

More than an icon of American “can-do,” Helen Keller was a tireless advocate of the poor and disenfranchised. Her life story could serve as a fascinating example for children, but most picture books about Helen Keller are woefully silent about her life’s work.

Related Resources

	Americans Who Tell the Truth: Helen Keller: Painting by Robert Shetterly and short biography.
	Letter to German Students: Helen Keller’s blistering letter to students in Germany preparing to burn her books in 1933. Read related article at Slate.com.

Reprinted from Rethinking Popular Culture and Media (published by Rethinking Schools), edited by Elizabeth Marshall and Özlem Sensoy.

More related resources below.

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A December 1773 advertisement for a Sons of Liberty meeting. History textbooks often gloss over — or ignore completely — the massive community organizing effort that underlay the armed rebellion against the British.

In conjunction with my book, Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past, I reviewed 22 elementary, middle school, and high school texts. Fourteen were displayed at a National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) convention that I attended, while eight are approved for use in California, which has among the strictest criteria in the nation. I compared the 13 mythologies of the American Revolution discussed in my book with those perpetuated in these texts, and the results are startling. Although some texts fare better than others, all contain some serious lapses.

A Declaration of Independence twenty-one months before July 4, 1776. Click image to learn more and see larger picture.

. . . In 1997, Pauline Maier published American Scripture, where she uncovered 90 state and local “declarations of independence” that preceded the U.S. Declaration of Independence. The consequence of this historical tidbit is profound: Jefferson was not a lonely genius conjuring his notions from the ether; he was part of a nationwide political upheaval. Again, textbook writers have watered down the legend while missing the main point. Many now state that Jefferson was part of a five-man congressional committee, but they include no word of those 90 documents produced in less-famous chambers.

Some say these myths are harmless — what damage can stories do? Plenty. They change our view of historical and political processes. Myths that celebrate individual achievement mask fundamental truths of great importance. The United States was founded not by isolated acts of heroism but by the concerted revolutionary activities of people who had learned the power of collaborative effort. “Government has now devolved upon the people,” wrote one disgruntled Tory in 1774, “and they seem to be for using it.” That’s the story the myths conceal.

This article was originally published in the Winter 2004/05 issue of Rethinking Schools magazine. For more critical reviews of textbooks, visit Rethinking Schools.

Related Resources

Ray Raphael’s website with articles, interviews, a quiz, a detailed critique of commonly used textbooks, and more.

The post Re-examining the Revolution appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

In all the solemn statements by self-important politicians and newspaper columnists about a coming war against Iraq, and even in the troubled comments by some who are opposed to the war, there is something missing. The talk is about strategy and tactics, geopolitics and personalities. It is about air war and ground war, weapons of mass destruction, arms inspections, alliances, oil, and “regime change.”

What is missing is what an American war on Iraq will do to tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of ordinary human beings who are not concerned with geopolitics and military strategy, and who just want their children to live, to grow up. They are not concerned with “national security” but with personal security, with food and shelter and medical care and peace. [Continue reading by selecting “Download to Read in Full” below.]

This article was originally published by Rethinking Schools.

Classroom Story

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Most books leave out the story of the 381-day bus boycott involving thousands of people.

Issues of racism and direct confrontation between African American and European American people in the United States are usually considered too sensitive to be dealt with directly in the elementary school classroom. When African Americans and European Americans are involved in confrontation in children’s texts, the situation is routinely described as a problem between individuals that can be worked out on a personal basis. In the few cases where racism is addressed as a social problem, there has to be a happy ending.

Most books show Rosa Parks on her own and leave out her role with the NAACP and her trips to the Highlander Center. (Pictured here with freedom school educator Septima Clark.)

This is most readily apparent in the biographical treatment of Rosa Parks, one of the two names that most children associate with the Civil Rights Movement, the other being Martin Luther King Jr. The image of “Rosa Parks the Tired” exists on the level of a national cultural icon. Dozens of children’s books and textbooks present the same version of what might be called “Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.”

Jo Ann Gibson Robinson was one of the main organizers of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Rosa Parks was a poor seamstress. She lived in Montgomery, Ala., during the 1950s. In those days there was still segregation in parts of the United States. That meant that African Americans and European Americans were not allowed to use the same public facilities such as restaurants or swimming pools. It also meant that whenever the city buses were crowded, African Americans had to give up seats in front to European Americans and move to the back of the bus. 

One day on her way home from work Rosa was tired and sat down in the front of the bus. As the bus got crowded she was asked to give up her seat to a European American man, and she refused. The bus driver told her she had to go to the back of the bus, and she still refused to move. It was a hot day, she was tired and angry, and she became very stubborn.

The driver called a policeman, who arrested  Rosa. When other African Americans in Montgomery heard this, they became angry too, so they decided to refuse to ride the buses until everyone was allowed to ride together. They boycotted the buses. The boycott, which was led by Martin Luther King Jr., succeeded. Now African Americans and European Americans can ride the buses together in Montgomery. Rosa Parks was a very brave person.

This story seems innocent enough. Rosa Parks is treated with respect, and the African American community is given credit for running the boycott and winning the struggle. On closer examination, however, this version reveals some distressing characteristics that serve to turn a carefully planned movement for social change into a spontaneous outburst based upon frustration and anger.

The following annotations on the previous summary suggest that we need a new story, one not only more in line with the truth but one that shows the organizational skills and determination of the African American community in Montgomery and the role of the bus boycott in the larger struggle to desegregate Montgomery and the South.

Click “Download Lesson” to continue reading article with myths and facts.

Why is this important?

One of the few children’s books that places Rosa Parks in the context of an organized movement.

When the story of the Montgomery bus boycott is told merely as a tale of a single heroic person, it leaves children hanging. Not everyone is a hero or heroine. Of course, the idea that only special people can create change is useful if you want to prevent mass movements and keep change from happening. Not every child can be a Rosa Parks, but everyone can imagine herself or himself as a participant in the boycott. As a tale of a social movement and a community effort to overthrow injustice, the Rosa Parks story opens the possibility of every child identifying herself or himself as an activist, as someone who can help make justice happen.

By Herbert Kohl, the author of more than forty books, including the bestselling classic 36 Children. A recipient of the National Book Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, Herb Kohl was founder and first director of the Teachers & Writers Collaborative in New York City and established the PEN West Center in San Francisco, where he lives.

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Because interactive computer games like The Oregon Trail are encyclopedic in the amount of information they offer, and because they allow students a seemingly endless number of choices, they may appear educationally progressive.

But like the walls of a maze, the choices built into interactive computer games also channel participants in very definite directions. They are programmed by people — people with particular cultural biases — and children who play the computer games encounter the biases of the programmers (Bowers, 1988).

Just as we would not invite a stranger into our classrooms and then leave the room, teachers need to become aware of the political perspectives of computer simulations, and need to equip our students to “read” them critically.

Originally published in Rethinking Schools Volume 10, No.1 – Fall 1995.

Related Critiques

I started my history teaching career in the early 2000s. When I first taught about the “pioneer trails” (as the textbook called them), students would always bring up the computer game Oregon Trail. Here’s what I learned then and how I use it today as a teacher educator. 1/6 pic.twitter.com/sdyVJfEkDI

— Christopher Martell (@chriscmartell) June 1, 2023

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However, the very idea that the United States was an empire did not occur to me until after I finished my work as a bombardier with the Eighth Air Force in the Second World War, and came home. Even as I began to have second thoughts about the purity of the “Good War,” even after being horrified by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even after rethinking my own bombing of towns in Europe, I still did not put all that together in the context of an American “Empire.”

Originally published in Rethinking Schools, Summer 2008, Volume 22.

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Milwaukee school board member Terry Falk (left) listens as local NAACP leader Wendell Harris argues against the proposed social studies textbook adoption. Photo by Barbara J. Miner.

Ever since the Civil Rights Movement, there has been grassroots pressure by educators and community activists to change the textbooks used in U.S. schools. Progress was made. Blatantly racist references to Africa and favorable comments about slavery were eliminated, photos were diversified, and stories of famous African Americans and women started appearing, if not in the main text, at least in scattered sidebars. Despite improvements, however, most mainstream social studies textbooks remain tethered to sanitized versions of history that bore students and mislead young minds.

This was brought home to me in 2008 when I examined the social studies textbook series being considered for adoption by the Milwaukee Public Schools. The books were from the dwindling constellation of large textbook publishers — Houghton Mifflin, Macmillan McGraw-Hill, and Scott Foresman. In keeping with state social studies standards, the 5th-grade textbooks in each series focus on United States history. Even though publishers make claims about being “multicultural” and honoring our nation’s “diversity,” none of the 5th grade United States history textbooks — even those exceeding 800 pages — examines the role of racism in U.S. history or even mentions the word “racism.” In two textbooks, the word “discrimination” doesn’t even appear. Nor do the texts tell students that any United States president ever owned slaves, even though 12 of the first 18 did, and all of the two-term presidents up until Lincoln owned and sold human beings.

As my colleagues and I examined the books more closely, a picture emerged that profoundly disturbed us. With important issues like racism, inequality, and conquest falling through the cracks of the historical narrative, there is little reason to recount the resistance to those types of oppression. There are occasional terse summations of resistance, but the bountiful history of people working together, crossing racial boundaries, and building social movements to make this country more democratic and just is omitted. Instead, history is more often viewed from the vantage point of the rich and powerful, the conquerors.

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Activism of all kinds courses through its pages. In contrast to typical textbook portrayals of a predominantly white abolition movement, credit here goes first to “the growing resistance of slaves themselves and the militancy of black and white abolitionists.” Later, in its descriptions of the Civil War, the book shows how enslaved African Americans were a powerful force in shifting the aims of the war from union to freedom. Despite Lincoln’s commitment to keep it a white man’s war, blacks — North and South — demanded the right to fight and, after they won that right, successfully fought for equal pay with white soldiers. In the South, enslaved people sabotaged plantations and ran away to Northern lines. Documents from numerous sources — novels, letters, speeches, congressional testimony, newspaper editorials — breathe life into the text and are accompanied by generally provocative discussion questions.

Exhilarating Defiance
Sections on Reconstruction are especially effective. Where most high school texts organize chapters around the policy zigs and zags of Lincoln, then Andrew Johnson, then the Radical Republicans, et al., Freedom’s Unfinished Revolution focuses on the creativity and determination of people at the bottom. Ex-slaves destroyed cotton gins, refused to work in gangs under white overseers, demanded their own land, and in 1867 in South Carolina refused to pay taxes to the white planter-dominated government.

In straightforward prose, students learn how ex-slaves sought in daily life to create a new, more equal society in the South:

Discarding the symbols of their enslavement, many rejected names forced upon them by slavemasters and took new ones. Casting aside drab garments of slavery, they wore new badges of freedom — brightly colored outerwear, fancy hats, ornate parasols, elegant veils.

They held meetings without white permission, supervision, or presence — that is, without the probing eyes of a master or overseer. In everyday encounters, they challenged former masters, mistresses, and overseers. Such defiance was expressed in a variety of encounters — looking an exmaster straight in the eye, talking back to a plantation mistress, refusing to tip a hat or give way to whites on a sidewalk.

In a world turned upside down, slaves found their defiance exhilarating.

Learn more in the Zinn Education Project national report, “Erasing the Black Freedom Struggle: How State Standards Fail to Teach the Truth About Reconstruction,” and find teaching resources on Reconstruction below.

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I started studying history with one view in mind: to look for answers to the issues and problems I saw in the world about me. By the time I went to college I had worked in a shipyard, had been in the Air Force, had been in a war. I came to history asking questions about war and peace, about wealth and poverty, about racial division.

Sure, there’s a certain interest in inspecting the past and it can be fun, sort of like a detective story. I can make an argument for knowledge for its own sake as something that can add to your life. But while that’s good, it is small in relation to the very large objective of trying to understand and do something about the issues that face us in the world today.

Students should be encouraged to go into history in order to come out of it, and should be discouraged from going into history and getting lost in it, as some historians do.

– – – – –

Download the full Rethinking Schools interview with Howard Zinn to find more answers to commonly asked questions about teaching a people’s history. The questions include:

• What do you see as some of the major problems in how US history has been taught in this country?
• How do you prevent history lessons from becoming a recitation of dates and battles and Congresspersons and presidents?
• How can teachers foster critical thinking so that students don’t merely memorize a new, albeit more progressive set of facts?
• Is it possible for history to be objective?

Interview conducted by Barbara Miner for Rethinking Schools in 1994.

This interview was published by Rethinking Schools in Rethinking Our Classrooms, Volume 1: Teaching For Equity and Justice. For more readings like “Why Students Should Study History: An Interview with Howard Zinn,” order Rethinking Our Classrooms, Vol. 1 with creative teaching ideas, compelling classroom narratives, and hands-on examples that show how teachers can promote the values of community, justice, and equality while building academic skills, edited by Wayne Au, Bill Bigelow and Stan Karp.

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