Teaching? I think we all forget that there is little TEACHING that they allow teachers to do these days. once upon a time . .. schools taught not only the Three R's but life skills, socialization and interaction . . . Now . . . I think they still teach the three R's . . .but that other stuff Conformity, rote memorization and regurgitation . .. i don't care much for. [I think Reservoir Dogs used the N-word more . . and far more derogatorially] You I feel weird . . being the only black person in a class listen to it. Yep . . . and you know what . . . maybe they need to feel weird about it. Feel the oily nastiness of it coming off their tongues feel the bile rise in their throats about it . . . There are no negative feelings . . only negative actions Sometimes. . you need to learn through negative reenforcement. Sometimes. . . you need to learn to hate something .. because hating it is good. Rocket River
I feel like I need a Rocket River day calendar. You know, you pull back the page and there's another RR thought for the day, kind of like a Far Side calendar thingie but better.
I'm pretty sure he'd say something along the lines of: "You cain' censuh the woiks of a glitterin' white angel like Mahk Twain. If them little heathen negroes don' wanna read it, good. They shouldn' be in school wit' white chillen in the foist place." Uncle Ruckus is a good example of exactly what Huck Finn was about- Highlighting the ugliness of racism is the only way to change it. When you pull punches, censor words, or overlook sections of history because they are unpleasant, the moral is lost and nothing is learned.
Our disagreement goes much deeper than I realized, and is probably more of a derail than it's worth. But, I think there is a lot more education to be had from literature than reading comprehension, regardless of your future studies or career. I think it'd be a grave disservice to students to consign them to such a literary ghetto on the assumption that knowing how to comprehend what they read is all they need to know. Kids don't know what's good for them. It on teachers and parents to give them what's good for them and make them take it. They may hate it now but they'll appreciate it later.
What a horrible case of censorship and political correctness gone bad. This is why I absolutely hate political correctness. I'm sorry if there are people who are white, African American, Hispanic or anything else that aren't able to see the book is a reflection of the times it was written in. The book was among the first if not the first in the U.S. to really show someone of African decent as human and capable of being a true friend. By teaching an edited version you are teaching students and potentially future authors to censor themselves so as not to offend anyone. That doesn't make for good literature. Why not teach the context of the times the book was written in, and give whatever background information would be needed. Explain how the white supremacists of the day hated the book, and how it was a great testament against racism. Explain why, and read the book as it was written. In addition to just the content, once words start getting changed the lyric flow of the writing is also changed. It is a horrible thing to do to a great piece of literature. If it was an art class should someone sculpt clothes on the top of Venus di Milo so as not to offend anyone. Would that really be better to let students study a Statue of David where someone had sculpted a pair of board shorts onto David? Really? The idea that more people get to read it because of the censorship is just crap to me. The work is a masterpiece because of the way it is written. To have folks who aren't capable of creating an equal masterpiece changing it is just BS. That's not directed at you, but was included because I was initially responding to your post.
Well, considering the fact that I am a writer myself, and not the genre fiction, but literary fiction, I realize that literature can change people's lives. It changed my life at 21 when I first read Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison for the first time. But at the same time, I realize that the types of books that I might read and learn from is not what a kid of today would learn from. Plus, the idea that the classics are better than say a rap song is something I totally disagree with. So, you can teach a kid just as much from so called low brow stuff as you can from high brow stuff. Or more to the point, take a rap song and compare it to say Elizabeth Bishop. But you have to be creative about brow beating kids, they don't learn by forcing things down their throat. In fact why would they even read the books assigned when they can get the main points summarized by sparknotes.
in my opinion, changing this only hurts the knowledge of the way the way the world was, do you not want to offend black kids, or do you want to teach all kids about history? I mean really what's next, taking slavery out of history books?
Yes especially given that the message is anti-racist, and that in the end he comes to think of him as Jim, and not N-word Jim. There was a play from the 1600's called 'Tis Pity She's a w****. It's a classic work by John Ford. While the term is disrespectful of women, I don't think it's OK to change the title of the play so that more women will read it. The Whole thing is so ludicrous
