Education: January 2011 Archives

Upon hearing there would be new editions of Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer" substituting the N-word with "slave," I quickly became a 15-year-old again. I was back in that cramped classroom, one of three black students, uncomfortably listening to students of other races read "Huck Finn" aloud.

Granted, the teacher took the right precautions: a pre-lecture on inappropriate use of the N-word, a separate conversation with the black students asking how they felt about the rest of the class using the term and a no-questions-asked option for all students to skip over the word during recitation. Still, I remember it being a few incredibly uncomfortable weeks of my secondary school experience.

Though I can remember being offended by the students who used the word more brazenly than I liked or the stares by students wanting to catch my reaction to use of the word, I now laugh off the memory as a growing pain, something me and many friends have commiserated about.

The reality is, Twain aimed to bring the language, attitude and actions of the people of a certain time to life through his literature. If read in the right context, with appropriate teaching methods, "Huck Finn" becomes both a historical and social learning experience. To erase the N-word from the text is to say it didn't exist in history. Doing so would be a disservice to our youth.

On a recent trip with girlfriends, a discussion regarding appropriate social network behavior arose. One friend said she's reluctant to post pictures of herself with alcoholic beverages fearing its effect on work prospects. Another argued that bosses, execs drink too. The discussion ended abruptly, with no consensus.

Four Kansas nursing students must have not come to a consensus either. They were temporarily dismissed from their program at Johnson County Community College after posting a picture with a placenta to Facebook. One of the students has filed a lawsuit claiming she didn't violate any school policy and wasn't notified by the instructor that such practices were prohibited.

I'm reluctant to side with either party in this story as I'm unaware of JCCC 's mission statement or privacy and behavioral policies. What I do know is that for the most part, social network etiquette has thrived on one rule: use common sense. Would an employer want to hire me if they saw me chugging a beer? Or, scantily dressed? Probably not.

But, what about a placenta? The answer isn't too cut and dry. Most know what too far looks like, but what about the realm between too far and appropriate? Cases like this will continue to pop up if businesses, educational institutions do not begin to provide concrete social network behavioral expectations.