It has been announced that "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" will be removed from the Duluth School District curriculum due to the books containing racial slurs.

Michael Cary, the district's director of curriculum and instruction, was quoted in the Duluth News Tribune saying that "We felt that we could still teach the same standards and expectations through other novels that didn't require students to feel humiliated or marginalized by the use of racial slurs," 

Both books are still available in school libraries.

An alarming note in the DNT article is that the district's English teachers were not consulted about the decision at all before it was made. Bernie Burnham, who is the president of the Duluth Federation of Teachers, was quoted as saying, "I don't think anybody is averse to change — there's obviously lots of great literature there that we can use with our students and are there reasons to walk away from that book? Probably — but we just want to be included in conversation about it,".

The story has begun to gain national attention, with publications such as Time.com and the Washington Post picking up the story.

 

 

 

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