[Jorge]

Read the book, Jorge. For the love of God, just read the book.

Instead of handing out reading assignments, why don't you save us both time and just address the issues raised in the article?

Twain's novel one of the most insightful, beautifully rendered allegories on the nature of friendship, justice, and racial equality ever written. The kind of blind, rubber-stamping censorship you advocate flies in the face of reason and all we know about the power of great literature.

This is all very nice, but I'm still waiting for you to explain why black children in school should have to read books with racial slurs as part of their education?

[SUSSA]

The root cause of the problem is not the book or racial slurs. The root of the problem is socialized schooling. If we returned to a capitalist school system everyone's desires could be accommodated.

Jorge and the parent in the article could send their children to schools that banned anything containing words they don't like. Others could send their children to schools that teach from "Heather Has Two Mommies" while others could send their children to schools that taught a classical curriculum.

The market would provide for all these options and more.

As long as parents chose to subsidize their lifestyles by feeding at the public trough these kinds of situations are unavoidable.

[Rembrandt_fan]

No need for the sarcasm and condescension, but okay.

The argument you're making parses out like this:

(1) Reading assignments in public schools should be carefully screened for incorrect content.

(2) Incorrect content may be defined as content which may cause offense to any ethnic, racial, or religious group, regardless of the context in which the incorrect content is presented. For example, the use of the 'F-word' in the novel 'Catcher in the Rye' would constitute incorrect content although the novel's protagonist, Holden Caulfield, describes seeing the word scratched on the wall of a public school, is offended by it, and complains of its use.

(3) Those offended by incorrect content carry an automatic majority vote in any decision concerning removal of incorrect content from any public school, library, or public institution, regardless of the number of those offended.

Again, Jorge, read the book. You're arguing from a vacuum. You're proposing dropping one of the greatest novels of American literature down the memory hole because you and others are seemingly incapable of understanding context or allegory. A good or even mediocre teacher is certainly capable of putting the novel in context for the children. Too bad there's not one standing over your shoulder in a bookstore.