We take care to create a classroom environment in which all students will feel comfortable to express their ideas on race relations in America. At the beginning of the school year, all students are informed that the institution of slavery and its legacy for racial relations in America will be a key component of our American history curriculum, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn will be an important text for our deliberations. Nevertheless, the majority of students are white. We have few African American students, although a significant population of Hispanics and Native Americans. I teach in an independent school in the Southwest where all the students are college bound. After discussing this issue with colleagues as well as current and former students, I am convinced that Huckleberry Finn is an appropriate text for a high school history curriculum which places the novel within the historical context of slavery and race relations in nineteenth-century America.īefore making a case for keeping Twain and Huck in the curriculum, I should describe my teaching situation. Moore’ piece, along with the decision of NewSouth Books to publish an edition of the Twain classic with slave replacing the word “nigger” in the text (leading to a quip on the Daily Show that black Americans had received an upgrade), has forced me to re-examine why I teach Huckleberry Finn in my eleventh grade American history class-an act of introspection which is always worthwhile for teachers. On January 16, 2011, author Lorrie Moore published an opinion piece in the New York Times suggesting that Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn be excluded from the high school curriculum as adolescents lack the knowledge and experience to place this controversial text within proper context.
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