Teaching Huckleberry Finn: Why and How to Present the Controversial Classic in the High School Classroom

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I am not sure I would call myself a scholar, yet I doubt there are many educators in America who have taken Mark Twain’s work into the places I have and come out on the other side. In the current political climate, I’m fearful that books that challenge us like Huckleberry Finn-books that are controversial-will be abandoned for fear of that controversy, the idea of upsetting some mom or some well-meaning, ill-informed school board member. Don’t teach the best stuff, teach the least offensive, things no one will object to-or remember. But wouldn’t Huck’s hard-scrabble life fit perfectly at my school? If Huck was alive, wouldn’t he go to my school? Wouldn’t Huck’s life strike a sadly familiar chord with so many of these young people raised by a single mom or a grandma, a Dad unknown or incarcerated, a long, sad trail of trouble stretching in every direction? Wouldn’t they find-didn’t they need-a moral compass in their own lives to mirror the one in this extraordinary tale of two absolute misfits who cared about each other; one willing to go, as he so movingly says, to Hell to help the other?