Corridor English teachers defend Huckleberry Finn

The Internet may have been ablaze the last few days with debate over a publisher's plan to edit the work of Mark Twain, but Huckleberry Finn's use in school has been hotly debated around the country for more than 100 years.

Despite controversy over novel's use of the N-word as a racial epithet, schools in Eastern Iowa still regularly assign the classic book in language arts classes.

Huckleberry Finn tells the pre-Civil War story of a young Missouri boy's travels along the Mississippi River with an escaped slave. The book always has been controversial, and frequently on the American Library Association's lists of banned and challenged books, but it made news nationwide last week after NewSouth Books announced it would publish an edition with all offensive words removed.

The book is an important part of teacher Tom Yates's literature classes at Iowa City High School because of how much information it contains about that period of history.

“I agree with Ernest Hemingway who said that if there is a truly great American novel of the 19th century, than Huckleberry Finn is probably it,” said Tom Yates.

The use of the N-word is an important part of the novel because it's used to dispel racism, not promote, said Micahel Moran, a Language Arts teacher at Kennedy High School in Cedar Rapids. Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn in response to a push against the civil rights reforms of the post-Civil War Reconstruction.

But it's still a difficult topic to introduce to students.

“You have to talk to them about it ahead of time,” Moran said. “The word slaps you in the face every time you come across it.”

Yates was very disappointed when he learned of plans to publish an edited version of Huckleberry with all references to the N-Word removed. He hopes the controversy regarding the planned edits helps foster a debate on the why the use of the N-word is considered taboo in the first place.

“The word's a whole lot more loaded today than it was in Twain's day,” Yates said. “If we're going to censor and clean up Twain's 125-year old novel, than should we also go ahead and clean up a rap song that came out last week?”

Moran doesn't agree with the choice, but he does understand why it was made in light of some schools avoiding the book altogether because of the presence of the N-word.

“For me to sit in front of the classroom and read this book aloud as a white man is uncomfortable for everybody,” he said. “Simply taking that word out means you can then talk about it within the cutural,  social and narrative aspects of the novel without that getting in the way.”