Censorship at its best

[littlenothing]

New edition of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer to replace "nigger" with "slave"That is truly one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard of. Let's not have a teaching moment about American history, or create a learning environment for contextual analysis, let's just water it down because some people (I'm guessing white) are afraid of a word.

Comments

[ebeatle]

Thank you! Omar and I were just discussing this. It's insane to think that deleting a word from text where it is historically significant will do anything other than harm the education that can accompany it.

[littlenothing]

I'm trying to imagine how this new version will be taught, "hey! isn't it interesting at this kid goes on a raft ride on the river?! what can we learn about ummmm...childhood independence?"
That is not a teaching moment, or worth even taking the effort to add to the syllabus at that point.

[littlenothing]

Agreed, a recent situation with this was the Dr. Laura fiasco where she proceeds to use nigger over the radio for several minutes, that was offensive. I mean, I'm glad I know where she stands now, but not cool as a whole.

To remove it from Twain however is just dense, and completely misses the a key point about the narrative. What's the point in having more kids read Twain in school if its stripped of its key teaching points?