Ruth Franklin travels the country to answer the question how should ‘Huckleberry Finn’ be taught?
Over the past few years, I’ve been speaking to teachers and students who believe that “Huck Finn” still has a necessary place in the classroom, because it is uniquely able both to convey the structures of racism embedded in American society and to model how prejudice can be overcome. The book provides its own master class in critical thinking; as Toni Morrison wrote in an admiring introduction to the 1996 Oxford edition, “The brilliance of ‘Huck Finn’ is that it is the argument it raises.” Watching teachers and their students grapple with it, and grappling with it myself, I came to feel that the book remains vital. Huck’s journey to political and ethical independence serves as a powerful testament to the importance of questioning authority and trusting oneself, a primary American principle that remains at least as urgent now as it was in Twain’s time. As one teacher told me, “It’s about the country’s search for a soul.”
Emphasis mine. If you have kids who have recently been through high school or are anywhere near to going through high school, the whole piece is worth reading.