A Virginia school pulls 'Finn' and 'Mockingbird' over slurs

[HomeMum]

This saddens me so much. Virginia school pulls ‘Finn’ and ‘Mockingbird’ over slurs: ‘It’s not right to put that in a book.’

 

The irony is that teaching your kids To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the best ways not to have a divided nation. Exposure, followed by discussion, is how children (and people and general) learn to think outside their own belief sets. It's how we grow as empathetic individuals. It breaks my heart to see this happen, year after year. 

 

How does this still happen? It's as though they've missed the countless times libraries across America have had banned books days, displaying and encouraging the reading of controversial books in the pursuit of knowledge and against censorship. 

[ikslo]

:(

[TranquilMind]

Goodness!

[Sneezyone]

I hated that book (Huck Finn). HATED IT. Still do. Not sorry to see it go. There are better ways.

Edited December 1, 2016 by Sneezyone

[Slartibartfast]

Huck Finn is one of the first books to ever depict a black person as a hero.

 

Jim is a good guy, a main character, that was unusual at the time.

[Tanaqui]

Talk about missing the forest for the trees!

[Guest]

Yikes. :(

[Pam in CT]

I hated that book (Huck Finn). HATED IT. Still do. Not sorry to see it go. There are better ways.

 

 

Sneezy, if I could ask --  are you not-sorry because of the slurs, or because you didn't find it to have literary merit?

 

ETA or because you didn't think it to be an effective vehicle for communicating issues of its time, or that it hasn't held up well in that regard, or some other reason?

Edited December 1, 2016 by Pam in CT

[bettyandbob]

I don't like it, but if you don't have a really good teacher with those books it's a big problem.

[Sneezyone]

Sneezy, if I could ask --  are you not-sorry because of the slurs, or because you didn't find it to have literary merit?

 

ETA or because you didn't think it to be an effective vehicle for communicating issues of its time, or that it hasn't held up well in that regard, or some other reason?

 

I was the only black kid in a class full of white people. The slurs smacked me in the face every time and I found it impossible to get beyond them. I also didn't feel it was an effective vehicle for communicating either about the time or the humanity of black people. I felt DEhumanized by having to read the book and had already begun reading and studying the works of DuBois and Garvey on my own. Twain's work of fiction didn't do me, my feelings, or the time period justice.

[LucyStoner]

I can see making Huckleberry Finn an optional book for teens. I can't see any wisdom in removing To Kill a Mockingbird from the curriculum.

[Tanaqui]

I felt DEhumanized by having to read the book and had already begun reading and studying the works of DuBois and Garvey on my own.

 

That's something that bugs me about those two books It's not that I loathe them or think they're awful myself - but why have we decided, as a society, that the best anti-racism books for teens are written by and largely about white people? This doesn't make any sense.

 

Edited December 1, 2016 by Tanaqui

[Slartibartfast]

I can see making Huckleberry Finn an optional book for teens. I can't see any wisdom in removing To Kill a Mockingbird from the curriculum.

I think that is fair, To Kill a Mockingbird is an amazing book and I can't any good in removing it.

[gardenmom5]

there have been arguments about finn in schools probably since it was written.  they were old when I was young.

mockingbird surprises me when considering the message of the book.  but then, there does seem to be a plethora of people who screech and holler over minutia instead of substance.  but that's also hardly new.

[Sneezyone]

Thanks for sharing this. 

 

Do you have similar feelings re TKAM ? 

 

And are there novels you'd suggest as better options ?

 

I never read TKAM. It was an option but I didn't select it. I think I was in 7th/8th grade when it occurred to me that I was really sick and tired of reading the accounts of white people. Seriously tired and so I dove headlong into other stories and perspectives. I don't know that I read as broadly as I could have with some guidance but did the best I could. ETA, I'm not sure my reading choices would be appropriate for all readers. LOL. I read James Baldwin b/c my parents had a copy of The Fire Next Time laying around. I read Maya Angelou and Alice Walker. I read The Ways of White Folks, Lorraine Hansberry, and Langston Hughes anthologies. I devoured that stuff for two solid years.

Edited December 1, 2016 by Sneezyone

[Slartibartfast]

That's something that bugs me about those two books It's not that I loathe them or think they're awful myself - but why have we decided, as a society, that the best anti-racism books for teens are written by and largely about white people? This doesn't make any sense.

Probably because during some of the biggest upheavals a book by a non-white probably would not have been as likely to have been printed or many non-whites were prevented from writing. We don't have the best ant-racism books. We don't have the viewpoint of millions because they were denied us.

 

Our perspective of that time period will nearly always be skewed because so many voices were silenced. We have to rely on the people who felt it was something that should be written rather than someone speaking their own truth.

[Tanaqui]

Well, I can't speak for Twain's time, but the nadir of race relations in this country coincides neatly with the Harlem Renaissance. There were books by blacks being published, books that addressed these same issues. A great many of those books are still in print. Sneezyone lists some authors.

[Sneezyone]

Well, I can't speak for Twain's time, but the nadir of race relations in this country coincides neatly with the Harlem Renaissance. There were books by blacks being published, books that addressed these same issues. A great many of those books are still in print. Sneezyone lists some authors.

 

I gotta say, I felt so empowered/validated by those works too. Finally, there were people like me being full human beings, expressing pleasure, pain, anger, and joy and not holding anything back to spare feelings. I don't know how other students would receive that stuff but for me it felt really good to know that submission/acceptance wasn't the only option.

[Pam in CT]

Thanks.  I can certainly imagine that being the only black kid in the room would change the reading experience considerably.

 

My mom chucked some of the same books you were reading over at me too... but they certainly weren't assigned in school.

 

 

I tend to think (for different reasons) both HF and TKAM are assigned way too young.  Just because a protagonist is young, doesn't mean it's suitable for young people.

 

 

[Anne in CA]

Totally agree that just because the protagonist is young does not mean the age level is the same. There is a lot of comfort in these books because I know that white people do feel bad over racism. They tried to make accessible how they felt. I do think both books can't be effective taught by a football coach who is teaching history/ English because the school needs him to, but I don't think they need great teachers either. I think a thinking person of a good age could learn a lot from either book.

[poppy]

I used to be vehemently anti-school censorship but I am a big believer in listening to people who say they feel victimized by a text* and I've heard that multiple times about Huck Finn, from people of color.

Not remotely, at all the intent of the book. 

It's literary merit, I dunno, I studied history  but it is most definitely an interesting book worth studying historically.

But required reading in a school-- is questionable.

 

The article says it is pulled from a classroom, but not the library. I think it would be a shame to pull it from the school library.

 

 

*Unless you feel victimized by Harry Potter. If you feel victimized by Harry Potter, I got nothing for you.  I really don't.

 

 

[Bluegoat]

Is the point of teaching literature to empower people, though?

[LucyStoner]

I never read TKAM. It was an option but I didn't select it. I think I was in 7th/8th grade when it occurred to me that I was really sick and tired of reading the accounts of white people. Seriously tired and so I dove headlong into other stories and perspectives. I don't know that I read as broadly as I could have with some guidance but did the best I could. ETA, I'm not sure my reading choices would be appropriate for all readers. LOL. I read James Baldwin b/c my parents had a copy of The Fire Next Time laying around. I read Maya Angelou and Alice Walker. I read The Ways of White Folks, Lorraine Hansberry, and Langston Hughes anthologies. I devoured that stuff for two solid years.

 

I read Alice Walker's books when I was eleven, starting with The Color Purple. Then the Autobiography of Malcolm X. And then progressed through much of the above. Between not going to middle school (and spending that time almost entirely in the Fremont branch of the city library, lol) plus going to a very unusual high school, I got to college having read most of the books that are commonly assigned in college literature and sociology courses. It was interesting to see my young white adult peers lose their everloving minds because *they* were offended by Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison. They were totally oblivious that they had not really read many non-white, non-het, non-male books before. I think it's totally legit to point out that by and large the books most commonly assigned in K-12 in many places and until recently were by white people and largely written at the time for white readers.

 

I think the solution is for schools to be assigning *more* books with a larger spectrum of writers than to ban books. I understand dropping things from the curriculum (and I think that is what they did in the link) but I will always resist the idea that they should be removed from the schools altogether. When we read Huck Finn here, part of the discussion was understanding the bias and skewed perceptions discussed in the book. The same way we discuss the issues with old primary sources in history and politics and the bias and bigotry in Little House on the Prairie.

[OnMyOwn]

Honestly, I hate the idea of censorship in any form, but I can see a problem reading those books aloud or discussing certain parts of them in a classroom.  At the coop we've participated in, most of the students are white, but there are a few AA students.  I have just cringed inside for myself and those students when certain things have been read aloud once or twice and I've thought that if my children were AA, I'd feel so upset about hearing that read and discussed in the classroom.

 

 

[LucyStoner]

Is the point of teaching literature to empower people, though?

The singular point? Nope. A point, a very important point, of many? Heck yeah.

[gardenmom5]

Thanks.  I can certainly imagine that being the only black kid in the room would change the reading experience considerably.

 

My mom chucked some of the same books you were reading over at me too... but they certainly weren't assigned in school.

 

 

I tend to think (for different reasons) both HF and TKAM are assigned way too young.  Just because a protagonist is young, doesn't mean it's suitable for young people.

 

this.

[debinindy]

I was the only black kid in a class full of white people. The slurs smacked me in the face every time and I found it impossible to get beyond them. I also didn't feel it was an effective vehicle for communicating either about the time or the humanity of black people. I felt DEhumanized by having to read the book and had already begun reading and studying the works of DuBois and Garvey on my own. Twain's work of fiction didn't do me, my feelings, or the time period justice.

 

Gosh, I'm so sorry you had to experience this.  As a teacher, I would feel awful if one of my students felt this because of what we were reading.  Thank you for sharing your experience.  Nothing should make a child feel dehumanized.

[Bluegoat]

The singular point? Nope. A point, a very important point, of many? Heck yeah.

 

Hmm.  I don't tend to think so.  Some people read to be empowered, but that's not why most literature is written, and teaching as if it was isn't really teaching about literature.

[ktgrok]

Thanks.  I can certainly imagine that being the only black kid in the room would change the reading experience considerably.

 

My mom chucked some of the same books you were reading over at me too... but they certainly weren't assigned in school.

 

 

I tend to think (for different reasons) both HF and TKAM are assigned way too young.  Just because a protagonist is young, doesn't mean it's suitable for young people.

 

THIS!!!! 

 

Of course, I feel that way about a LOT of fiction. 

[LucyStoner]

Hmm. I don't tend to think so. Some people read to be empowered, but that's not why most literature is written, and teaching as if it was isn't really teaching about literature.

You don't write most literature and you really can't say why most authors write their books. There's a lot of books that have considerable content concerning empowerment and related themes. Literature can be written and read for any reason at all. We don't get to limit the role of literature to our own personal conceptions of literature'a purpose. There's just too much of it to speak that broadly.

 

For me, I used literature as a way to explore the human condition and to do that, at least in my experience, I needed to feel actively engaged and motivated to read and explore more. Empowered, if you will.

 

Let's not forget that literacy itself was a path to various forms of empowerment and the deprivation of literacy has more than once been a tool to disenfranchise and repress people.

Edited December 2, 2016 by LucyStoner

[Farrar]

Well, I can't speak for Twain's time, but the nadir of race relations in this country coincides neatly with the Harlem Renaissance. There were books by blacks being published, books that addressed these same issues. A great many of those books are still in print. Sneezyone lists some authors.

 

That was my first thought in reading the piece.

 

I have zero objection to teens studying these books - both are great works of literature and important ones in "the canon." They explore important issues and both tried to explore issues of race in their time periods in ways that were super important and I would argue not racist... And I think it's good particularly for white students to read white people grapple in a positive way with race... but... often it seems like the literature lists for high schoolers are sadly missing Zora Neale Hurston and Maya Angeleu and James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison and so forth and those works are equally important. If a literature list has Huck Finn and no works by the great African American writers, then it's a problematic, one-sided list.

[Bluegoat]

You don't write most literature and you really can't say why most authors write their books. There's a lot of books that have considerable content concerning empowerment and related themes. Literature can be written and read for any reason at all. We don't get to limit the role of literature to our own personal conceptions of literature'a purpose. There's just too much of it to speak that broadly.

 

For me, I used literature as a way to explore the human condition and to do that, at least in my experience, I needed to feel actively engaged and motivated to read and explore more. Empowered, if you will.

 

Let's not forget that literacy itself was a path to various forms of empowerment and the deprivation of literacy has more than once been a tool to disenfranchise and repress people.

 

I'm sure some people write to empower.  I feel confident in saying that most literature is not written for that purpose. 

 

That it's broad is my point.  If all we get out of literature is what we want, there isn't much point teaching it or learning about it.  Give kids access to some books that they might like.

 

We study it to come into contact with other minds and other ideas, voices from other places and times.  Not always comfortable ones, or ones we like or agree with. 

[Liz CA]

Thanks.  I can certainly imagine that being the only black kid in the room would change the reading experience considerably.

 

My mom chucked some of the same books you were reading over at me too... but they certainly weren't assigned in school.

 

 

I tend to think (for different reasons) both HF and TKAM are assigned way too young.  Just because a protagonist is young, doesn't mean it's suitable for young people.

 

Agree. I am sad that someone thought TKAM needed to be pulled off the shelves. There is some serious misunderstanding. I cannot explain it any other way. It's a book of its time and very poignant in highlighting conditions in a region of this country at the time it was written. Ds read it when he was about 16 or 17. It's been so long I cannot remember but I think he saw the movie at an earlier age.

I am wondering how you all feel about "The Help?" A much more recent book, also made into a movie.

Edited December 2, 2016 by Liz CA

[Daria]

Probably because during some of the biggest upheavals a book by a non-white probably would not have been as likely to have been printed or many non-whites were prevented from writing. We don't have the best ant-racism books. We don't have the viewpoint of millions because they were denied us.

 

Our perspective of that time period will nearly always be skewed because so many voices were silenced. We have to rely on the people who felt it was something that should be written rather than someone speaking their own truth.

 

Not so much for Twain perhaps, but there are absolutely books written by black authors from a black perspective in the Jim Crow South.

 

I agree that replacing the books because of vocabulary isn't the right reason.  But pulling TKAM from the middle school curriculum and replacing it with Warriors Don't Cry wouldn't bother me at all.

[Farrar]

Agree. I am sad that someone thought TKAM needed to be pulled off the shelves. There is some serious misunderstanding. I cannot explain it any other way. It's a book of its time and very poignant in highlighting conditions in a region of this country at the time it was written.

I am wondering how you all feel about "The Help?" A much more recent book, also made into a movie.

 

As I understand it, the school didn't ban the books or take them off the shelf of the library - students aren't prevented from reading them. They might even be optional books on honors lists or something along those lines. They've just been taken off the standard classroom syllabus for reading. Which... books go on and off all the time. I do think these books are worth reading but you can't read everything...

 

I don't have a problem with The Help per se... but it's not great literature IMHO so from that perspective, I'd shy away from wanting it on a high school reading list anyway. In terms of race, it's a recent work of historical fiction from a white perspective so it really feels to me like it's not adding any diversity to a reading list if it's lacking it. Or necessarily really raising deeper issues - certainly not as in depth as reading actual works by great African American writers or reading classics like TKAM or Huck Finn.

[Bluegoat]

I don't teach literature to empower, but there's a fine line between that, and inadvertent disempowerment, I guess.

 

What sneezy described is a form of disempowerment; I'm going to take her experience into account from now on, whilst still being motivated to teach literature from a pov that does not take 'empowerment' as a starting point.

 

Yes... it can be - but I think also it's a short step into a hole in the other direction - can we say someone is really learning about literary history - or the great conversation since we're on a classical board - if they aren't reading the important texts?  I wouldn't suggest there is some essential list of them, but I think that it would be near impossible to get even a little window on it without encountering some  books we find personally uncomfortable.  And while it can work to widen the field somewhat textually, to add different authors who have been sidelined in the past, many of those books don't have the same resonance within the conversation itself, because they weren't well-known. 

 

I wouldn't expect a high school to do a really comprehensive job at putting the students into that conversation, much less a middle school, but public school is where many students first are introduced to and become aware that there is a kind of history of ideas - more so maybe in literature classes than in history classes.  At least in the academic stream, students should be prepared to go on to university level studies, and I tend to think all students should have a sense of the history of ideas.

 

It seems to have become a significant issue at universities as well, not just an issue for younger students, where they are uncomfortable with textual choices and asking for them to be replaced.  It's not even that they are arguing that they are bad or unimportant books, from a sort of lazy postmodernist perspective - it's that they make them uncomfortable.  I think its not possible to teach the humanities in that way with any kind of integrity.

 

Now, perhaps younger students shouldn't be expected to be similarly able to deal with that material, but I wonder a bit if the reason they feel they think they can't is because they have no experience doing so.  How do people learn this?  At what point do we expect it - for first year students, only for humanities majors?  I also tend to think that being able to engage with material or ideas that seem inimical to us, even in personal ways, is ultimately one of the most intellectually empowering things.  Our civic life in recent years seems to be really suffering in part, I think, because people take public discourse as personally directed.

 

This all seems rather abstract, I realize, when a student in a class actually feels uncomfortable.  But I don't think it is as simple as that, and ignoring it will have poor results in the longer term. 

[LucyStoner]

I'm sure some people write to empower. I feel confident in saying that most literature is not written for that purpose.

 

That it's broad is my point. If all we get out of literature is what we want, there isn't much point teaching it or learning about it. Give kids access to some books that they might like.

 

We study it to come into contact with other minds and other ideas, voices from other places and times. Not always comfortable ones, or ones we like or agree with.

This seems to presume that people only gain a sense of empowerment from things that are comfortable or that they agree with. For me that has not been the case.

[LucyStoner]

My thoughts about the Help are wrapped up in one sound:

 

Meh.

 

I wouldn't be impressed to see that book on the curriculum for any class my older son might take.

[Pam in CT]

re empowerment and purpose of literature

 

This seems to presume that people only gain a sense of empowerment from things that are comfortable or that they agree with. For me that has not been the case.

 

Me either.  I mean, a good affirming-exactly-what-I already-think or -am story is very affirming in the moment, but over the long haul I've been much more deeply affected by literature that unsettled or provoked me in some way.  Empowerment is different from affirmation.

 

 

HF is among a handful of literature works that rocked my world.   The glacially slow, incremental dawning on Tom Sawyer's part that this person is actually a human being, despite everything he'd ever been taught by his family and church and teachers, and the concomitant realization that everything we've been taught could be wrong, literally made me look at the onslaught of messaging from my society and the media and my education and my (kind, well meaning) parents differently.  

 

Until HF I had experienced my own socialization as benign and true; which may very well be very different from how black children experience it.  HF provoked me to question my own socialization.   That empowered me in the long haul, though it unsettled me in the moment.  I experienced it as a profoundly anti-slavery, anti-racist book.  

 

As an adult (reaffirmed when my son and I listened to it on a long road trip a few years ago) I also experience it as a profoundly anti-establishment and (as part of that) anti-church book... and I do wonder whether that is part of the controversy it generates, to the extent that adults who critique have actually read it since childhood.  It is hard for me to understand how the content and theme of HF can be deemed racist.

 

 

None of which speaks to the power of the slur.  Or the experience that sneezy describes of sitting in a classroom as the only, or one of a handful, of black kid/s.  That is real.

 

 

[Bluegoat]

This seems to presume that people only gain a sense of empowerment from things that are comfortable or that they agree with. For me that has not been the case.

 

No, I am actually saying the opposite.  Real empowerment comes from being challenged and uncomfortable, or being able to access all kinds of ideas and people and language without becoming personally diminished.

 

I don't think that is necessarily how people first experience or interpret those feelings though, when they start reading things that are difficult.  I think it takes practice, and often supportine teaching or mentoring, to come to the place where we do that more easily or automatically. 

[Sneezyone]

No, I am actually saying the opposite. Real empowerment comes from being challenged and uncomfortable, or being able to access all kinds of ideas and people and language without becoming personally diminished.

 

I don't think that is necessarily how people first experience or interpret those feelings though, when they start reading things that are difficult. I think it takes practice, and often supportine teaching or mentoring, to come to the place where we do that more easily or automatically.

I'm trying to think of any other novel in the 'cannon' that challenges white people to accept racial slurs throughout as well as the slow, painful dawning of consciousness on the part of non-white people that they are in fact human beings.

 

Which novel is it that challenges white middle schoolers to be 'uncomfortable' to that extent?

 

I didn't need HF to know that folks had trouble seeing me as a full human being. They showed me on a regular basis and many times still do. That's not being made uncomfortable. That's being insulted.

Edited December 2, 2016 by Sneezyone

[Pam in CT]

I'm trying to think of any other novel in the 'cannon' that challenges white people to accept racial slurs throughout as well as the slow, painful dawning of consciousness on the part of non-white people that they {white people} are in fact human beings.

 

Which novel is it that challenges white middle schoolers to be 'uncomfortable' to that extent?

 

 

There are none.  There can be none.  That's what asymmetrical power means.

 

That is precisely the divide on our respective socialization -- we're all sloshing around in (kinda-sorta) the same socialization waters, exposed to (more or less) the same media and messages and Canon -- but we don't receive it similarly.  Because where I received my socialization as benign and trustworthy...

 

 

...

 

I didn't need HF to know that folks had trouble seeing me as a full human being. They showed me on a regular basis and many times still do. That's not being made uncomfortable. That's being insulted.

 

You didn't.  (I do get that.)

 

I did.  For me it was the first alarm that led, ultimately, to my own glacially slow incremental still-in-progress awakening, on race and also in many other aspects of my socialization.

 

 

Which does not in any way answer to the power of the slur, and certainly does not justify your experience in your classroom.  

 

For me (and FWIW I did not read it in the classroom, it was yet another book my mother chucked at me without much commentary) it was the opening salvo in my personal jihad with white fragility, though that term had not yet been developed.  And the role of schools in working on white fragility is... well.

 

 

On HF specifically, I net out to a hot mess of conflicted cognitive dissonance.  As a work of literature I believe it has immense value... to the extent that it is treated as the story of moral evolution rather than a series of boys' adventures (which Tom Sawyer actually *is*).  But because it is generally treated as a series of boys' adventures, and because (relatedly) it is so commonly pitched to an age group that is (on average) not yet able to hear its counter-establishment, almost insurgent message... and also because of the very real power of the slur which I do not underestimate, I understand why it's increasingly deemed unsuitable for mandatory assignments.  

 

OTOH I do wonder if all the shocked, shocked! concern about the slur from folks who don't always seem generally concerned with racism might sometimes be a sort of.. cover for distaste about its anti-church, anti-civ'lization themes.

 

OTOH I do accept the direct power of the slur itself.  So, hot mess.

 

I am STRONGLY opposed to taking it off school library shelves.  That is a different question altogether.

 

 

[Slartibartfast]

Not so much for Twain perhaps, but there are absolutely books written by black authors from a black perspective in the Jim Crow South.

 

I agree that replacing the books because of vocabulary isn't the right reason.  But pulling TKAM from the middle school curriculum and replacing it with Warriors Don't Cry wouldn't bother me at all.

I think they both should be taught, TKAM isn't just a book about race.

[Bluegoat]

Books aren't just taught for their own selves.  They can be important because of their relation to other books, and to how people thought about things more generally.  The books that are typically on lists without moving much, and that are controversial when they are removed, are usually there because there are important for understanding literature in a more general way. 

 

As an example, in my own area of study, there are lots of people who find reading some of Augustine's work distasteful, and sometimes in a very personal way.  But it is actually impossible to be educated in ancient thought, or understand later thought, without reading him.  It isn't the same to be told what he says, or read a paragraph here and there.  His thought influenced the thinking of the western half of the Roman empire for over a thousand years.  Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk, and to understand the Reformation will mean understanding how Luther thought about Augustine.  And so on.

 

A basic knowledge of how American literature has developed is probably going to have to include Twain.  And probably Victorian lit written in English more generally. 

Edited December 2, 2016 by Bluegoat

[Farrar]

Wait... what grade level were these being assigned for? Someone said middle school... no way should Huck Finn be standard middle school reading even apart from any other issues with the book.

[Bluegoat]

The article doesn't seem to say, just that it was a school district decision.

 

I was assuming high school.

[Farrar]

Someone else I know posted about this and the article was super vague and I realized it's not clear what they did with the books. Like, the other article said they were "pulled from the school district" and that the books were "suspended." But who was reading the books, in what classes and grades, what the overall literature syllabus looked like, whether the books were actually taken off shelves in the library, whether they can be assigned as choice reading, etc. etc. is all not covered. Sigh. Cruddy journalism.

[poppy]

I can't imagine reading for empowerment only.  Who would they ban, Elie Wiesel ? 

[Sneezyone]

No one suggested that reading should be for empowerment only but if you think Huck Finn is important because it allows little white kids to see people who look like them struggling with concepts of race and justice (thus empowering them to do the same) then you can/should understand why it is equally important for minority kids of all stripes to see themselves in literature as multi-dimensional beings too...without being insulted in the process. Much of the commonly used 'cannon' does not do that.

Edited December 2, 2016 by Sneezyone

[Slartibartfast]

No one suggested that reading should be for empowerment only but if you think Huck Finn is important because it allows little white kids to see people who look like them struggling with concepts of race and justice (thus empowering them to do the same) then you can/should understand why it is equally important for minority kids of all stripes to see themselves in literature as multi-dimensional beings too...without being insulted in the process. Much of the commonly used 'cannon' does not do that.

I agree that Huck Finn isn't really ok in a little kid's curriculum, it is generally a high school book.

 

The Superintendent removed the books from the district, not just an elementary school.

 

I agree, I don't there is enough literature of different races/nationalities studied in schools but I don't think books should be removed from a high school library.

 

 

Both books have been temporarily suspended from classroom and library use in the schools under the district’s policy manual, which authorizes a committee made up of the principal, library media specialist, classroom teacher, a parent and/or student, and the complainant to review the materials.

They removed the books from the library.

Edited December 2, 2016 by Slartibartfast