Disability rights activist (1 risultati)

First Edition. Keller, Helen. Our Duties to the Blind, 1904, calls upon Massachusetts to address the unemployment and economic dependence confronting blind adults through vocational training, employment opportunities, and state action. Presented when Keller was twenty-three and completing her final year at Radcliffe College, the paper distinguishes academic education from the practical means of earning a living and argues that schooling without preparation for employment leaves blind graduates dependent after their education ends. Keller places responsibility on Massachusetts to "raise the adult blind from dependence to self-respecting citizenship," an early statement of the economic and employment concerns that remained part of her public advocacy. The address also dates from the year Keller graduated from Radcliffe, becoming the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. Keller, Helen. Our Duties to the Blind. A Paper Presented by Helen Keller at the First Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Association for Promoting the Interests of the Adult Blind, January Fifth, 1904. Boston: Thomas Todd, 1904. First edition. 16 pages. Purple printed wrappers. 12mo, measuring 6 ¼ x 3 ½ inches. Keller delivered the paper at Perkins Hall during the Association's first annual meeting, addressing the circumstances faced by blind adults after leaving school. She attacks an educational model that provided advanced academic instruction without corresponding preparation for economic independence: "To teach Latin and Greek and higher mathematics to blind pupils, and not to teach them to earn their bread, is to build a house entirely of stucco without stones to the walls or rafters to the roof." Keller supports the argument with correspondence she had received from educated blind adults seeking employment: "I have received letters from educated blind people, who repeat the cry, 'Give us work or we will perish,' and their despair lies heavy on my heart." The Massachusetts Association for Promoting the Interests of the Adult Blind had emerged from contemporary efforts to address vocational training and employment beyond institutions devoted principally to educating blind children. Keller's address presses the state to extend its responsibility beyond education and create practical means by which blind adults could support themselves, linking training, employment, economic independence, and citizenship in a single reform program. Her argument preceded decades of public work on behalf of blind people and other political causes; the Library of Congress records that she later worked for the American Foundation for the Blind for more than forty years. Purple wrappers and contents in very good condition. First edition of an early Keller address devoted specifically to the material conditions of blind adults and their access to paid employment.…