I am not a teacher or professor but merely an educated layperson devoted 
to Twain and his works.

If I had one wish regarding Twain, it would be that at least half of the 
teachers teaching Huck Finn to their students substitute Connecticut 
Yankee instead.

AHF is great, of course, but in many respects, IMHO, Connecticut Yankee 
is the Twain book most relevant to so many of society's problems today.  
While ATF is mined for its confronting of race, Connecticut Yankee 
confronts class -- i.e., economic injustice. It addresses grave issues 
involving progress and technology, and of science vs religion.

I love AHF, but I just don't understand why it is unfailingly THE book 
of Twain the average student is exposed to, while a masterpiece like 
Connecticut Yankee -- which is laugh-out-loud funny page after page yet 
contains the seeds for so much serious discussion about so many aspects 
of Western civilization -- fails to get its due in the American classroom.

--Steve Hoffman
Takoma Park MD



Harold Bush wrote:
> just out of curiosity -- which edition of Huck Finn do teachers on here
> prefer to use in the classroom?
> I used to use the old Bedford critical edition edited by G. Graff but I see
> it is now evidently out of print.  It may be that the Penguin classics
> edition (Seelye) is also either out of print or about to be replaced.
>
>