Rethinking Race In the Classroom: Newsweek

Quoted via Newsweek:

A Different World: For Mississippi students in 1970, segregation wasn't ancient historyIn early January, just before Obama's inauguration, John Foley, a white high-school teacher in Ridgefield, Wash., penned a guest editorial in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that suggested it was time to stop teaching books that readily use the "N word." Stories that portray African-Americans as inarticulate and unintelligent souls in need of white America often offended both his black and white students. Foley identified "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," "To Kill a Mockingbird'' and "Of Mice and Men'' as three books that needed to be reconsidered immediately.

That editorial set off a fierce debate on blogs, radio shows and in classrooms across the country. Now that there's a black man in the White House, what message does it send our kids to read aloud a classic that uses the N word more than 200 times?  . . . more