Montgomery Finds Racial Slur Offends, No Matter the Context

Education scholars recommend that teachers prepare students for books such as "To Kill a Mockingbird" with historical images and writings that explain the time and place in which the works are set. This can -- and should -- be done without dwelling on racial slurs or reading inflammatory material aloud, said Jocelyn A. Chadwick, a Twain scholar and former Harvard University professor who works in the education division of Discovery Communications.

"All of those speeches, those texts, those novels are placed into a contextual period, and students have to understand the period before reading the text," Chadwick said in a telephone interview. Undue focus on epithets, she said in a subsequent e-mail, "unnecessarily stresses students."

Approaches to racially charged literature vary among local school systems.

D.C. parents may opt not to have their children read Lee's book, which is taught after a preparatory lesson on Jim Crow, civil rights and the justice system, according to John White, a spokesman for the school system. "Huckleberry Finn" is not taught in the school system. Arlington students read "Mockingbird" and "Huckleberry Finn," prefaced by lessons on epithets and "why the words are no longer used," said Linda Erdos, a spokeswoman for the school system.

The Twain book is taught, although not required, in Fairfax high schools. Instructional materials call for students to "examine the cultural and political impact of language" in books of that era.

Montgomery students read "Mockingbird" two years before "Huckleberry Finn." In the past three years, they have prepared for Lee's book by reading Naylor's essay and the poem "Incident," by Harlem Renaissance figure Countee Cullen.

After Maya's complaint, Montgomery curriculum officials surveyed teachers and students on the lesson. Some students "expressed, in hindsight, some discomfort and some concerns" about the selections, Brown said, but most deemed it worthwhile. She noted that the lesson, as written, did not call for teachers or students to read aloud Naylor's essay. No complaints arose at other schools.

"It's about the word," Brown said, "but it's not actually going through the essay and reading the word aloud again and again."

An alternative lesson, to be taught in the fall, replaces the essay and the poem with a piece by the Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. called "What's in a Name," which tells of the disparaging treatment of his father by a white man, who refers to all black men as "George."

Students also will study a pair of Library of Congress photographs depicting the Jim Crow era: a girl drinking at a segregated fountain and a man entering the "colored-only" section of a theater.

It's "an easier lesson to use," Brown said, and it accomplishes the same goal of preparing students for the book they are about to read.