One need not dwell on the damage this can do not only to the literature of the world but to the fresh minds that will grapple with it for the first time.
Posted on 09/25/2008 4:48:58 AM PDT by Blue Turtle
MANCHESTER, Conn. -- Instead of dropping “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” from its reading list, the Manchester school system has decided to hold seminars for teachers on how to deal with issues of race before bringing the book back to classrooms.
The goal of the seminars is to put the book into perspective and create a dialogue on race, white privilege, satire and stereotyping, which were also issues when Twain published it in 1885.
(Excerpt) Read more at wfsb.com ...
Yet, Timmy Has Two Daddys is thrown in the mix like it's a math book?
One need not dwell on the damage this can do not only to the literature of the world but to the fresh minds that will grapple with it for the first time.
Gee, when I studied the works of Mark Twain in school, I NEVER considered race as an issue associated with the story and we understood that the story was set in a different time.
If teachers can’t phrase that in a way that is clear and simple for the students to grasp without a “seminar”, do they REALLY belong in the front of the classroom?
“If teachers are too stupid to understand Huck Finn as a treatise against slavery and bigotry, they’d be totally lost with a book like Pudd’nhead Wilson.”
Exactly.
In the book Jim befriends Huck and Tom at considerable cost to himself. He is in fact a heroic figure by his actions.
But don’t expect a book with the term “nigg*r” in it to ever be given more than a cursory look. It MUST be racist.
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