Tuesday, January 6, 2009

"Time to update schools' reading lists"
By John Foley, guest columnist, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 6, 2009, Page A 9

"Last updated January 5, 2009 3:35 p.m. PT

Guest Columnist: Time to update schools' reading lists
By JOHN FOLEY
GUEST COLUMNIST

The time has arrived to update the literature we use in high school classrooms. Barack Obama is president-elect of the United States, and novels that use the "N-word" repeatedly need to go.

To a certain extent, this saddens me, because I love "To Kill a Mockingbird," "Of Mice and Men" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." All are American classics, and my students read them as part of approved sophomore and junior units, as do millions of students across the nation.

They all must go.

I hope they go to private and public libraries and remain in high school classrooms. I would keep copies in my own classroom and encourage students to read them. But they don't belong on the curriculum. Not anymore. Those books are old, and we're ready for new.

Even if Huck Finn didn't contain the N-word and demeaning stereotypes, it would remain a tough sell to students accustomed to fast-paced everything. The novel meanders along slower than the Mississippi River and uses a Southern dialect every bit as challenging as Shakespeare's Old English.

Explaining that Twain wasn't a racist -- or at least didn't hate African-Americans (he had a well-documented prejudice against Native Americans) -- is a daunting challenge. I explain that Jim, a black man, is the hero of the book. I tell them Huck eventually sees the error of his ways, apologizes to Jim and commits himself to helping him escape slavery. Yes, I tell them, he does all this while continuing to refer to Jim by the demeaning word, but Twain was merely being realistic.

Many students just hear the N-word. This is particularly true, of course, of African-American students. I have not taught Huck Finn in a predominantly black classroom, and I think it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to do so effectively. With few exceptions, all the black students in my classes over the years have appeared very uncomfortable when I've discussed these matters at the beginning of the unit. And I never want to rationalize Huck Finn to an angry African-American mom again as long as I breathe.

John Steinbeck's "Mice" and Harper Lee's "Mockingbird" don't belong on the curriculum, either. Atticus Finch, the heroic attorney in Lee's novel, tells his daughter not to use the N-word because it's "common." That might've been an enlightened attitude for a Southerner during the Great Depression, but is hopelessly dated now.

What books should replace these classics? The easiest call is for "Mockingbird." David Guterson's fine "Snow Falling on Cedars" has similar themes and many parallels, and since the novel is set in the San Juan Islands, it would hold more interest for Washington students than the Alabama setting of Lee's novel.

I think a good substitute for "Mice" would be Tim O'Brien's Vietnam novel "Going After Cacciato." Like George and Lennie in Steinbeck's novel, Cacciato dreams of peace and a better world. And the Vietnam War is a more recent -- and arguably more painful -- era in American history than the Depression, and one of more interest to teens.

"Huck Finn" is the toughest book to replace; it's so utterly original. The best choice, in my view, would be Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove." Like Huck, "Dove" involves an epic journey of discovery and loss and addresses an important social issue -- the terrible treatment of women in the Old West. That issue does not rank as high as slavery on our national list of shame, but it definitely makes the list.

Some might call this apostasy; I call it common sense. Obama's victory signals that Americans are ready for change. Let's follow his lead and make a change that removes the N-word from the high school curriculum.

John Foley of Vancouver is an English teacher at Ridgefield High School in southern Washington.

My response:

While I respect Mr. Foley's suggestions, I submit that he is dead wrong. First, to replace true literature of the past with something that's new, fast-paced and perhaps trendy is equivalent to not teaching history because it's old-fashioned. Additionally, the problem always becomes who will choose what to replace and with what? Who chooses the chooser? Time and widespread acceptance have proven the value of Huck Finn, Mockingbird and "Of Mice and Men", not the dictate of a single person or entity. But the most disturbing part of Mr. Foley's guest column is that to pretend "The N-Word" doesn't exist or to command that it not be used is to give it a cachet of darkness, which only breeds desire. In our time of change transparency is the watchword. More than banish such words, thoughts and feelings develop a course on Stereotypes and Epithets, and study them. Show students through education that people who use such words are simply ignorant of the world about them. Let such a class be a boarding gate into the acquisition of knowledge. I believe that if that word and others weren't elevated to such importance that, when they were used, the user would be looked down as ridiculous, then they wouldn't even be thought of. And, finally, Mr. Foley, you state that some students "appeared very uncomfortable" in discussing such "matters". Isn't it the job of a teacher to confront such uncomfortableness with education? In fact to celebrate such emotion, explain it and diminish it by discussion, not by making believe it doesn't occur. No, book banning should not be a part of any curriculum, but education about free speech should be.

Theodore M. Wight
2201 Third Avenue
Seattle WA 98121
(206) 956-111

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