I push back against the idea of modifying a great book just out of instinct but I don’t think that is the right reaction. They abridge books all the time to make them acceptable for younger readers if only by making them shorter.
That's for morons and to make them accessible to people who lack the experience and ability or time to read it in it's proper form. I read the book when I was in fourth grade and I didn't need abridgment, so I don't know who the hell such a hypothetical version would be aimed at. You can't get much between fourth grade and See Spot Run. In any event, this is changing the books to suit the DISTASTE of certain parties for them. Why not go around and change the endings of books to suit the popular mindset while you're at it.
The point was we already modify books to make them more accessible for people and we don't get all of this flopping and squawking. Your small minded disdain for people who read unabridged books really is beside the point. Guess what everyone doesn’t think like you do.
What you read in the fourth grade (from the way you act I assume that was only a few years ago) isn’t relevant since modifying the book was not to make it simpler to read.
This is much less change then that.
A punch in the mouth is less traumatic than surgery, but one of those is a crime and the other is a service for which considerable payment is offered. Degree is irrelevant, principle is what matters.Bullshit. Removing one word is not a punch in the face. We also modify works for content on regular basis without all the hand wringing and screams of censorship. They dub movies to make them more family friendly and retell stories to make them more acceptable for modern families. Purist may want Sleepy Beauty to end with the witch dancing in burning shoes but they tend to be purest without kids.
If I was a fourth grade teacher I would be very leery of introducing this book to my classroom with the n word in it.
Mine wasn't. Guess how I learned the word? Reading "Tom Sawyer", as assigned by my 3rd & 4th grade teacher. I asked my mother what it meant (from the use early in the book I thought it meant a practioner of some obscure sect of supertition), and after her fit of apoplexy, once she ascertained where I learned it, she explained to me the use and context. Or do you think children should learn the word from rap music? The way I learned it made it absolutely certain that I knew how people used it, that it was not a word to use casually, and underscored for me the history of racial injustice by showing that at one time and in some places, it was acceptable to use such a foul term casually. They fact that you didn't learn the word until the fourth grade leads me to believe you went to a lily white school. If your teacher was teaching in mixed race school that already suffered from racial tensions she may not have been as brave. Some teachers might be brave enough but the majority would you have you read To Kill a Mockingbird instead. Schools have been sued over the book and that in and of it self tends to make them shy away from it.
They teacher is free to discuss the fact that the word was removed and why it was removed but they won't be asking a little white boy to say it out loud in a room full of black students. The teacher is also free to just call it n-word without saying nigger in class full of students who may be offended by the word. Try and keep in mind that unless you are black our society considers this one of the most offensive words in the language. You will get fired for saying it at work, kicked out of school for using it class and your ass kicked for saying it in front of the wrong people. It is probably the only word you can get your ass kicked just for saying it out loud. I can't think of another word that a large number of people would consider violience an acceptable response simply for saying it out loud.
If adults have to call it the n word instead of saying even if they are not using it refer to a person then how the hell are going to expect twelve year-olds to handle it better.
Maybe the adults shouldn't be such pussy little bitches and expect the world to conform to their sensibilities. What is it the liberals (like the publishing house in question) are always saying when defending pornography and blasphemous "art"? "If it bothers you, don't look at it." Maybe you should stop being such a pussy little bitch who gets his panties in a wad because an offensive word was taken out of book for school children.
The stay away if offends you argument doesn't work when you are in a public school operated by public funds. Beside the argument cuts both ways. If taking the word out offends you then don't read it. If you want to read it with the word there it is available pretty much anywhere.
It is an important work and we should not let one word keep children from reading it.
So instead, let's kill what makes it "important" ! That sentence, standing on its own is absolutely correct. In context of the rest of this post and the subsequent statement, it is absolutely backwards. So your argument is that giving you the chance to say nigger out loud is what makes this an important book? Blanket statements are great but if you are going to make the simple minded statement that a single word that wasn't considered offensive at the time the books was written is what make it an important work you are going to need to back it up with something more. The book was considered offensive when it was written and was banded from some schools but not for use of the word nigger.
I think it is important to keep i9n mind that the kids will have access to the book in its original form it just won’t be the form used in class.
Doesn't that make the censorship rather pointless then? Anyway, the issue is not simply another abridged version, it is that this is going to purport to be the real thing. I didn't see where it said they would not tell the students the book had been modified. The censorship is only pointless because you missed the point. The reason for removing the word from the book isn't (or shouldn't be) that we simply do want the kids to hear the word but that the word has become so toxic since the book was written that it overshadows that rest of the book. I disagree with removing the word from the school library copies but it does make since for classroom copies where the students are ask to read out loud.
Besides ther word does offend some people today and being offensive what not the goal of the book.
Then what WAS the goal of the book? It seems to me that a significant intent was to illustrate the attitudes, behaviors and speech patterns of certain regions. How does sterilizing it to appease a contemporary fad meet that goal? Why not change all the phonetic-spelled dialects to proper spelling for "ease of reading"? Much of that dialogue was redundant, and is only in the story to show how people talked, so altering that eliminates that aspect of the story and leaves you with a lot of people talking unnecessarily.
and all of that is still there even if you take that one word out. If you don't take it out then rest of it might as well not be there for most students because they will never read it.
Also, removing the words undercuts the effect of their use. When Huck confesses the difficulty in lowering himself to apologize to a slave, the impression is one of socio-economic seperation. If he says "black man" it becomes clinical and detached and an objective self-assessment, rather than conveying how he felt. Only by leaving in the word nigger do we get the connotation of superiority and how it clashes with what he knows to be right and wrong and how Jim is shafted by the whole society and how that same culture has made doing the right thing difficult for Huck. The latter, however, is what the author intended.
The word slave would still give the same meaning since that is how the word is used in the book the majority of the time. Must modern students would understand the term runaway slave better than the term runaway nigger since the word nigger is not a synonym for slave anymore. Can't you point to a place in the book where the word nigger cannot be replaced by the word slave without changing the meaning? The word nigger has more impact true but it also has much more impact now then when the book was written so time has already changed the meaning of the book.
Let grownups learn how to deal with the word then we can let kids worry about it.
New Edition of Huckleberry Finn will eliminate offensive words
- 04/01/2011 07:16:36 PM
1701 Views
That's nothing that new. I read Sawyer and Huck Finn when I was like 10, and it was definitely water
- 04/01/2011 07:45:07 PM
800 Views
That's new to me.
- 04/01/2011 09:35:05 PM
767 Views
There's a difference between a kids' version and a normal version with a censored word, though. *NM*
- 04/01/2011 11:19:26 PM
360 Views
Wouldn't the "kids' versions" ALREADY have that word excised? *NM*
- 04/01/2011 11:53:09 PM
375 Views
Read real books then. What kind of ten year old needs to read dumbed down children's books?
- 04/01/2011 11:21:27 PM
925 Views
my gut says it wrong but my brain says it is OK
- 04/01/2011 09:11:00 PM
998 Views
No, the goal of the book (or one of them) was to illustrate authentic dialogue. Your brain sucks.
- 04/01/2011 11:49:13 PM
811 Views
I see logic isn't your strong point.
- 05/01/2011 04:09:27 PM
822 Views
Re: I see logic isn't your strong point.
- 08/01/2011 01:32:16 AM
830 Views
it still boils down to the fact that most teachers will not use a book with word nigger in it
- 08/01/2011 02:55:29 AM
735 Views
Wow. Hmm.
- 04/01/2011 09:31:27 PM
856 Views
naw Twain was a pinko liberal *NM*
- 04/01/2011 09:46:57 PM
363 Views
"Roar! You changed my book and now I eats you! Bwahaha"...umm...we really need a zombie smiley.
- 04/01/2011 10:59:39 PM
763 Views
It's probably a bad idea
- 04/01/2011 11:06:02 PM
761 Views