Literary Classics Banned in Virginia School District

[Draggingtree]

Lifezette : Literary Classics Banned in Virginia School District

Parents need to stand up, say 'enough,' and take back their schools

 

by Deirdre Reilly | Updated 02 Dec 2016 at 2:45 PM

As a citizen, a parent, and an avid reader, I am heartsick over the news that a Virginia school district has temporarily banned both Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” from the school reading list.

 

The Accomack County school district made the controversial decision after a parent complained her high school-aged son was “traumatized” by racial slurs used in the books.

 

As a mom, I am angered. Books like Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” routinely make schools’ reading lists — in one passage of Morrison’s tome, sex with cows and rape are all discussed using the “F” word — yet Harper Lee’s Pulitzer-prize-winning exploration of childhood, segregation, and the legal system is not fit for consumption? And Huck Finn’s trip down the Mississippi in a classic tale that examines the culture of the south pre-Civil War is too racially insensitive?

 

[Valin]

@Draggingtree

 

"Banned both Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”

 

Yes we need to apply the standards of the 1880's to today....

 

Save us from Presentism

 

 

I'm traumatized by the number of morons who are traumatized that Mark Twain used the N word.

 

 

Common Sense Media

 

There's a reason why many consider THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN to be one of the great -- if not the greatest -- American novel. It broke many of the literary rules of its time and thus set the pattern for much of American literature ever since. It's told in first-person dialect by a great-hearted but ignorant bumpkin of a boy who understands far less than the reader but who knows how to follow his heart over his head. And it deals forthrightly, and scathingly, with racism, the great American problem.

 

Those who attempt to ban this book (and it is one of the most frequently challenged, year after year) can't see the forest for the trees. They see the liberal use of the "N" word and assume it's racist, when in fact it's just the opposite -- it's a powerful, and powerfully moving, statement against racism (as well as slavery, war, and a host of other American problems). Despite its flawed final section, when Tom Sawyer reappears and the author reverts to the style of that lighthearted, lightweight book, this remains, more than 100 years after its publication, a book that every teen should read.