Teacher John Foley, on a mountaintop

Now that Barack Obama has been elected president, novels such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Of Mice and Men “have to go” because they “use the ‘N-word’ repeatedly,” says a high school English teacher in Washington state. In an op-ed column for the still unfortunately named Seattle Post-Intelligencer, John Foley — a teacher at Ridgefield High School — calls the books “hopelessly dated” and suggests they be replaced with books such as “David Guterson‘s fine Snow Falling on Cedars” because it “has similar themes and many parallels, and since the novel is set in the San Juan Islands, it would hold more interest for Washington students.” Concludes Foley, “Some might call this apostasy; I call it common sense. Obama’s victory signals that Americans are ready for change. Let’s follow his lead and make a change that removes the N-word from the high school curriculum.” The column has drawn a strong reaction in the newspaper’s letters page: One former teacher writes in to say “Obama would be horrified if he knew this censorship was done in his name.” Says another, “Now seems like an odd time to downplay the American tragedy of slavery and its linguistic legacy — the N word.” An even angrier torrent responded in the online comments section: “What an amazingly stupid teacher this is,” says one response. “There is nothing in American Literature that more succinctly and directly attacks racial prejudice than Mark Twain‘s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Another says, “The American classics go or the PC teacher goes? I say the teacher.” Nor has the column gone over well in the halls of Foley’s own school, says a report in the Los Angeles Times. Ridgefield school board head Julie Olson says, “I have a 14-year-old son, and he’s read To Kill a Mockingbird. He clearly understands the concepts involved, and it wasn’t really a stretch for him to get it.” Meanwhile, on his own website, Foley says he thinks the shitstorm in response to his comments “reveals a fear of change.” Also, he says, “I’d also like to remove The Great Gatsby from the curriculum. Fitzgerald’s prose is lovely, but those spoiled characters really torque me off.”