Ban Huck Finn in School?

In his article “Finn’s Wake: Twain’s ‘Huckleberry’ is a Flawed Masterpiece,” Gene Skoler takes a stand against Mark Twain’s the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn being taught in junior and senior high schools. I find Skoler’s argument to be contradictory, and some of his points are simply irrational. He recognizes that Mark Twain desired to place “Huck Finn” at the pinnacle of literary realism, yet he criticizes Twain for creating characters that …

…message in “Huck Finn” are the same: ignorance. Most people in society simply do not understand the power and significance of that racial label. If we do as Gene Skoler would like and ban Mark Twain’s masterpiece from our schools, then we are not only developing policy around society’s ignorance, but we are accepting ignorance instead of combating it, and that is an atrocity much greater than Twain ever committed with the “N-word.”