A subject has caused a lot of talk this week: the appearance in our country of what is called “sensitive reading”. It consists in asking people specialized in this task to proofread a manuscript before publication to detect what, given what is said or presumed about certain groups or people, could hurt or make people uncomfortable.
This practice has existed for a few years already in the United States, where I observe it carefully. As we can guess, it is debating.
Some see it as a step towards greater justice in the representation that literature gives of groups that are often minorities and about whom little is said; others worry about the possible censorship they see emerging; still others suspect that this practice would limit the ability of literature to fully play its role of revealing the world and ourselves to us; and finally others see in all of this above all an economic calculation by publishers who fear boycotts of the works they publish.
All this, which is already complex when it comes to works intended for adults, becomes even more so when it comes to works intended for young people and children. This means that these debates inevitably come to school, as shown by the example of the United States.
What do we do with Huck?
There, the heated controversies aroused by Mark Twain’s novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finnunanimously recognized as a masterpiece, have become exemplary in these matters.
The action, which takes place before the Civil War that will end slavery, tells the story of the escape of a young white boy (Huck) and a slave (Jim) and the adventures it takes them through. Twain uses the n-word many times. Some schools banned him for this; others have it read all the same, with warnings and explanations; others read the corrected version offered by a publisher, where the n-word is replaced by “slave”.
These are too vast questions for a simple chronicle. But I want to express my hope that these sensitive readings of books for children in school will take into account what this institution is and what it implies.
School and emotions
No one will dispute that we can, and even that we must, prohibit certain works for certain age groups and that this also applies to what we read or are required to read at school. For example, the fact that a work is considered incomprehensible for a certain age is a possible argument, and it is moreover the one invoked by Jean-Jacques Rousseau to ask that we not teach the fables of La Fontaine. to the youngest (a bad idea, in my opinion…).
Sensitivity, by which I mean here the emotions that a work arouses or can arouse, can also be invoked to prohibit. This, I think, will be agreed upon by everyone and has de facto been practiced forever.
As far as the school is concerned, however, all of this takes on a particular aspect because this institution transmits knowledge and prepares for adult and civic life. At school, we will thus feel new emotions aroused, nourished by knowledge, without which they would be inaccessible.
Here is Raphaëlle, 13, who has just understood how Euclid went about proving that there are an infinity of prime numbers. She saw a strong new emotion in front of the cold beauty of mathematics. She begins to think about studying in this field: if necessary, it will not be her last great emotion in this field.
Take again, precisely, literature. Only if we have been taught, say, what a sonnet is, a rich rhyme and other things, will we be able to appreciate this or that poem. Without this knowledge, you do not have access to certain beauties. But having known them, you can exchange, debate on them, with others who sometimes disagree with you – as you will do as an adult as a citizen on so many subjects.
The same is true in history, say that of the Civil War and slavery for a young American. He will no doubt be shocked, jostled, outraged by what he will discover, but, and this is important, he will experience all of this within the framework of the school, which offers a context which wants to be (and which is, we I hope) safe, attentive to the age of the pupils, to what it is possible to say to them and to their reactions. In this sense, school is a rich place of education in emotions: we tame them, we understand the link they have with knowledge, on which they partly depend. Through it, we prepare to meet them in real life and in the virtual world.
I think that any sensitive reading of works intended for schools should seriously take into account all of the above.
Coming back to Huck, I remember a remark made by an African-American author and scholar specializing in the subject, David Bradley, that really struck me. When asked if the edition where the n-word is removed did not have the advantage of making the book read to anyone who might be offended by it to the point of not reading it, he replied: “It does not is more Huckleberry Finn let’s read, then! “, adding that we lose, for example, this rich, instructive and moving moment when, having discovered that Jim is more faithful than the whites of the South to the Christian values which they nevertheless claim, Huck returns to him by saying of their pursuers who are approach: “They are coming for us. And not: “They are coming for you.” »
This we, word in n, seemed to Bradley, in its original context, to take on its full meaning…