I've been told repeatedly, by a number of different folks, that the emotional impact of the "N-word" is so much greater now than it was even, say forty years ago, that the book becomes almost unreadable to many folks today.
I cannot fathom why any of those people would say that.
Neither can I, personally. However, I have not had the experience of growing up black in American society, nor had to deal with the day-to-day racism that is still way too prevalent. As a privileged member of society, it's not my place or within my ability to comment on someone else's pain.
I could not agree more that teachers should have their students discuss and debate the novel and the use of the N-word. However, if a teacher is going to open the discussion, what's the advantage of beginning with an expurgated version of the story? It seems to me that students mature enough to have the discussion must be also mature enough to read the original words.
I think that's more a school administration thing than a schoolteacher thing. I can easily see where school administrators might not permit the original version but might permit the edited version, at which point it falls to the teachers to actually open that dialog.
To present the redacted version as part of an official curriculum is to refuse to legitimize the word. I'm not saying I agree with this reasoning, but it does make at least a modicum of sense.
I can see that line of reasoning, as well, and I can even endorse it. At the end of the day, I'm a pragmatist. I think that Mark Twain's writings are an extremely important part of the American story. If this lets more people be exposed to them, then that's an end result I can get behind.
Which all goes to show that the K-12 educational system(s) should be chucked in their entirety and then be reconstructed on the model from the 1950s and early 1960s (ie, before "new math", "ebonics", and their ilk).
"New math" is just arithmetic and algebra. The "old math" it replaced is, frankly, bizarre. For example, have you ever seen how to subtract two large numbers the old way? It is, frankly, a Byzantine process.
Secondly, I can't imagine how any teacher can educate properly if they have to work under such a cloud. How can they possibly teach tolerance of any kind if they have to worry that it might cost them their job?
This could be the worst consequence because teachers, who are the role models with most exposure to the young, are best positioned to change attitudes. As Helen Keller said: "The highest result of education is tolerance."
Heh That's nothing. In American society, we are so terrified of anything even remotely controversial that we only just barely stop short of requiring all teachers to be celibate virgins. God help any public school teacher who is, or is rumored to be, gay or otherwise in any sort of non-traditional relationship at all, or who has ever in the past, even before becoming a teacher, been involved in any sort of non-traditional relationship.
