I'd like to tackle the question of the book's relevance not by
concentrating on the combat over one particular word, but by looking at
the book's action in a broader context.

Huck is the child of a missing mother and a poor, alcoholic father.
"Pap," if we if we take into account his name, his dialect, and
America's patterns of immigration, is likely to be the son of Irish
immigrants.   Huck is thus, on at least three counts (poverty,
ethnicity, being the child of an addict) a social pariah.  Add to these
problems that he is undereducated and does not speak standard English.
He is, quite simply, mired in what has come to be known as the "cycle of
poverty."

Accident elevates him; at the start of _AHF_ he has the entire
community, noblesse oblige, trying to "rescue" him, to help him
acculturate.  In the process, he must learn social codes that condemn
who he was.  The codes he originally learned from his father condemn
learning as "uppity" and as betraying his group.  Other codes he learns,
partly from his father, partly from the entire society, condemn
African-Americans, the next group of folks below him (son of an Irish
drunkard) on the social totem pole--in a society that gives lip service
to meritocracy.

My question is how could such a story NOT be relevant to today's
children?  Huck's social dislocations are those that many American
children experience.  Many have to deal with peer pressure that says to
hate school and learning, and to hate members of other groups.  At the
same time, they are under pressure to climb socially.  They have to
figure out how, if they choose to climb, to do so without hating their
past selves; how to adjust to a multi-ethnic society; etc.

In this context, it is easy to see how the book remains deeply
controversial.  It never easily endorses middle-class norms, but it does
not really validate any "ethnic" or "populist" alternatives.  Given how
America has tried to come to terms with its multi-ethnic, classist
conceptions of what consitutes a good life, this book is bound to be
attacked from all sides.  Add to that the fact that the book challenges
fundamentalist Christianity as the equivalent of pagan superstition--no
surprise it's regularly damned from nearly every kind of pulpit.

And that is one reason why it should be so EASY to teach this book to
adolescents.  It is not a pillar of western culture; it is a
counter-text.  It should be taught as such.  In an institutional context
that is supposed to instill a certain set of values, _Huck_ presents a
huge challenge, but that's the fundamental challenge of any education
worthy of the name.

Gregg Camfield