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- Jun 27, 2011
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Two classic, yet oft-challenged, novels have been temporarily removed from bookshelves at public schools in a Virginia school district.
A student’s mother complained at an Accomack County school board meeting in November that her son, who is biracial, had struggled to read passages containing racial slurs. Superintendent Warren Holland recently informed local news station WAVY-TV that To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn had, as a result, been temporarily pulled from the schools.
There’s no denying that the books depict bigoted conduct and offensive language. According to the AP, racial slurs appear 219 times in Huck Finn and 48 times in To Kill a Mockingbird. The American Library Association rank both among the most banned and challenged books in the nation, and no wonder: according to ALA statistics, offensive language is one of the most common motivations for a challenge.
Nonetheless, both books remain widely read and taught in the U.S., for their literary quality and for the manner in which they grapple with the nation’s sordid racial history.
The parent who filed the complaint saw the books differently:
“Right now, we are a nation divided as it is,” the mother is heard saying in an audio recording of the meeting on Nov. 15[...] “So what are we teaching our children? We’re validating that these words are acceptable, and they are not acceptable by any means,” the parent said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...ia-county-schools_us_58407884e4b0c68e047fa947
A student’s mother complained at an Accomack County school board meeting in November that her son, who is biracial, had struggled to read passages containing racial slurs. Superintendent Warren Holland recently informed local news station WAVY-TV that To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn had, as a result, been temporarily pulled from the schools.
There’s no denying that the books depict bigoted conduct and offensive language. According to the AP, racial slurs appear 219 times in Huck Finn and 48 times in To Kill a Mockingbird. The American Library Association rank both among the most banned and challenged books in the nation, and no wonder: according to ALA statistics, offensive language is one of the most common motivations for a challenge.
Nonetheless, both books remain widely read and taught in the U.S., for their literary quality and for the manner in which they grapple with the nation’s sordid racial history.
The parent who filed the complaint saw the books differently:
“Right now, we are a nation divided as it is,” the mother is heard saying in an audio recording of the meeting on Nov. 15[...] “So what are we teaching our children? We’re validating that these words are acceptable, and they are not acceptable by any means,” the parent said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...ia-county-schools_us_58407884e4b0c68e047fa947