“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain is what most people would call a classic novel. The book was first printed in 1885. A new version that Twain scholar Alan Gribben is working on will combine the books “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “Tom Sawyer.”

The n-word was commonly used in the time period in which the novel is set and holds immense historical value. We believe the offensive nature of the word is exactly what makes it a good teaching tool. Although many teachers do not want to expose their students to the offensive nature of the words, it is a way to teach students about the racism of the times. In order to make sure that history does not repeat itself, we have to teach students how damaging and hurtful these words can be.

The majority of the users on Twitter did not agree with the editing of Twain’s novel.  One user, Jury_Jury said, “Rewrite Huckleberry Finn? really? Are we gonna take the Holocaust out of Anne Frank's diary too? Or maybe rewrite Lolita so shes 18 yrs old?” Another user, TWITTERWHALE said, “Huckleberry Finn removes the "N" Word. Great!!! I love when people erase racism and pretend it never happened.” We agree that the language, which clearly is offensive, still can offer historical value in literature and to remove it would be censorship.

Emily Abbate, a writer for “The Stir,” says the book teaches how to understand why not to use the offensive word and that taking it out would downplay history. “If you ask me, a classic is a classic. When I was reading Huck Finn in my eighth grade English class, I never once thought that the use of the N-word was offensive... The novel helped me understand the time period the word was used and talk about the severity of the word with my classmates. The new version makes it seem as if there was never an issue with vocal discrimination in the deep South.”

Gribben said, "It's such a shame that one word should be a barrier between a marvelous reading experience and a lot of readers.” Our opinion is that this one word should not have to be a barrier.

We should still be able to teach it in schools within the context of such works as Twain’s and learn from the close-minded views of the past.

We cannot turn the other cheek and pretend that history did not happen, because to learn history is to learn how we should behave in the future.

It is naïve to think that the high school and college students who are reading this book are not already exposed to offensive words. Young adults hear these words all the time in movies and music. We believe that it is not our right or our role to shield students from words in literary classics that will always be a part of our nation’s history.

Our fear is that if we start now by censoring these books, how far will it go? What other works of literature will be next?