Huck Finn is Challenged at Minne

The article Huck Finn = Pedophilia? first appeared in the TonkaFocus e-newsletter of July 1, 2005, after the completed report was part of the school district's public record.

Why TonkaFocus thinks this issue is important:

First, a quick description of the Materials Review Process, the procedure used whenever someone raises a concern about texts or materials used in the Minnetonka Schools.

     - Any citizen may question or complain about texts and materials used in the Minnetonka Schools.
     - 1st step is a private discussion with a teacher or staff member about the material
     - 2nd step is a private meeting with the principal to discuss concerns
     - either of these steps could result in curriculum being modified or materials or texts being removed; the person complaining is not identified and no one would be likely to know changes were made.
     - 3rd step is to ask the district's Materials Review Committee to convene a public meeting to hear the complaint. (Members of the Materials Review Committee - 2 teachers, 1 administrator, a school board member, 2 students, 5 parents/community members - are asked to serve a 2 year term.) The committee meets only when someone requests a public review of material - during the 2004-05 school year, the committee met only once, to review the Huck Finn complaint.
     - 4th step is to make a complaint to the Superintendent and the School Board

Diane Eaton, a parent in the district, and wife of school board member Dave Eaton, chose to take her complaint to the third level, asking the Materials Review Committee to convene a public meeting. Ms. Eaton's complaint publicly accuses the school district of promoting pedophilia - Ms. Eaton's words, not ours - in the way Huck Finn is taught at MHS. Ms. Eaton states she’s acting on behalf of a group of parents, which indicates she is comfortable talking about this issue.

The rest of us should be, too. Go here to see Ms. Eaton's original complaint and the findings report of the Committee
(These documents were obtained in June, 2005 through a public records request to the Minnetonka Public Schools)

   Diane Eaton, a parent in the district, and wife of school board member Dave Eaton, filed an Objection to Content of Instructional Materials in March 2005, objecting to the way Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is taught in some 10^th Grade English classes at MHS. Among her objections was the “promotion of pedophilia to minors” and “not relevant to topics that we were told would be discussed (race).” She suggests students read Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or some other "commentary on race."
   In a March 10, 2005 letter attached to her complaint and addressed to David Adney, Principal at MHS, Ms. Eaton writes that in her research of a commentary studied by students during the Huck Finn unit (a literary criticism essay by Jane Smiley) “I found no basis of truth or evidence to back up the wild assertion that there is homoerotic attraction between Huck Finn and Jim.” Ms. Eaton writes, “If you are using this kind of commentary with Huck Finn we all begin to wonder, ‘what else are they feeding our kids?’” and “Promoting pedophilia to minors is actually against the law in Minnesota.” Ms. Eaton states that trust has been broken because the teacher told them at conferences that race is a theme in Huck Finn, but nothing was mentioned about homosexuality.
   On April 12, 2005, the Committee on Reevaluation of Material met to discuss Diane Eaton’s complaint. Ms. Eaton requested that the article, “Say It Ain’t So, Huck: Second Thoughts on Mark Twain’s “Masterpiece” by Jane Smiley, be discontinued as a supplement to the Grade 10 English Huck Finn unit because the article was not relevant to the topic of race, and promoted pedophilia.
From the Report on Materials Review Committee Findings of Fact: “The committee reviewed the Citizen’s Request for Materials Consideration, the Material Selection Policy, and considered other district policies to help set the context for decision-making. The group had researched reviews of the article and of the author, Jane Smiley. Members could not find evidence in the article that it promoted pedophilia. The article is intended as a commentary and an opinion. They determined that race did seem to be the predominant theme and the article was a general critique of Mark Twain’s writing.”
   The Committee held a public discussion that day and reached a unanimous decision in the presence of Ms. Eaton.
Decision: The article may continue to be used for Grade 10 English.
Appeal: This decision of the Committee shall be for one year unless appealed to the School Board. Appeal may be made to the School Board in writing to the Superintendent.
   The committee numbers 11 people and includes 2 students (both of whom, as it happened, had read Huck Finn and the commentaries with their English class the previous year), 5 parents, 1 principal, 1 school board member and 2 staff members. All signed in agreement with the decision and it is now part of the public record of the school district.

The Rest of the Story:
   Jane Smiley’s commentary is one of several read and discussed by students in 10^th Grade English during the Huck Finn unit, particularly in 10X (accelerated); other literary criticism/commentary studied includes those by T.S. Eliot and Toni Morrison. The unit lasts several days; many students bring both the book and supplementary packet home to study and/or share with their families.
   As is often the case in our high school curriculum, supplementary materials are used in addition to texts to allow students to use critical thinking skills to examine other viewpoints.
   The main theme of Jane Smiley’s commentary is that Huck Finn may not deserve canonization as a great American novel, especially in regard to the way it addresses racism. Jane Smiley refers to earlier commentaries on the novel, including one by Leslie Fieldler, who argued in his still-controversial 1948 essay that he saw sexual attraction between Huck Finn and Jim, the escaped slave. Ms. Smiley does not assert her agreement with this view; she asserts her disagreement with many of the arguments made by several generations of commentators. (Since Mark Twain died in 1910, he can't respond personally to Mr. Fieldler, Ms. Smiley, or Ms. Eaton, nor to most of the thousands of pages written about Huck Finn.) Mark Twain, himself, said his book showed "in a crucial moral emergency, a sound heart is a safer guide than an ill-trained conscience." (1895)
   Near the end of her essay, Jane Smiley writes,”…the entry of Huck Finn into classrooms sets the terms of the discussion of racism and American history, and sets them very low: all you have to do to be a hero is acknowledge that your poor sidekick is human; you don’t actually have to act in the interests of his humanity.”
   Jane Smiley argues that children ought to read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, because “Stowe’s novel is clearly and unmistakably a tragedy. No whitewash, no secrets, but evil, suffering, imagination, endurance, and redemption – just like life.” She concludes by saying, “… our children want to know what is going on, what has gone on, and what we intend to do about it. If ‘great’ literature has any purpose, it is to help us face up to our responsibilities instead of enabling us to avoid them…”
   Do you agree or disagree with Jane Smiley's views of Huck Finn? Plenty to discuss either way, isn't there?

A quick search on the web will yield many commentaries and articles about Huck Finn.
http://www.literaryhistory.com/19thC/Twain.htm might be a good place to start.
Jane Smiley’s essay, originally published in Harper’s Magazine in December 1995, is harder to find; it’s included in the Norton Critical Edition, Third Edition, of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Of Note: Diane Eaton writes that she's acting on behalf of a group of parents, but doesn’t say how many nor who they are. In addition, she uses the pronoun “we” when she describes a meeting with an English teacher; it isn’t clear to whom “we” refers. Ms. Eaton is the wife of Dave Eaton of the Minnetonka School Board.