Huck Finn's Hidden Lessons: Teaching and Learning Across the Color Line - Softcover

Rush, Sharon E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0742545202 ISBN 13: 9780742545205

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006

Synopsis

Huck Finn's 'Hidden' Lessons questions the educational suitability of 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' in the classroom. The author argues that the book teaches misguided lessons about race relations. Huck Finn's 'Hidden' Lessons challenges the more typical understanding of Huck Finn and guides readers through an analysis that demonstrates how racism functions in the book and the classroom.

About this title

Review

In this pathbreaking book, law professor Sharon Rush raises critical questions about the iconic American novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, giving us a controversial and deeply critical analysis of the racist context, text, and implications of Mark Twain's masterpiece. Rush does not argue that all young readers should be kept away from the book, but rather that Huck Finn should not be government-mandated reading for children in elementary, middle, and high schools because most of them are not emotionally and intellectually prepared to deal with a book that presents the 19th century United States in such an intensely racist and white supremacist fashion.--Joe R. Feagin, Texas A&M University

...powerful and moving...This is more than a cognitive critique of racism and a position statement, but the heartfelt appeal of a mother and a lover of democracy--a carefully woven project that elicits empathy slowly but surely.--Eileen O'Brien, College of William and Mary

About the Author

Sharon E. Rush is a professor at the Levin College of Law at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

About this edition

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0742545202
• ISBN 13: 9780742545205
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176