Mock Trial of Huckleberry Finn

Is that a real judge? No, that is Trevor Blake and Aly Soares serving as the judge and clerk of our mock trial! It was Parents vs. Mark Twain and the Board of Education, debating the question: is the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn promoting racism? If so, should it be taught in American public schools?

Students preparing for the trial with Judge Pacarro and guest attorneys

 As a teacher, it is difficult to convince students to read books from different time periods, especially ones written in dialects of the American south in the mid 1880s. However, MPX10 students had a real reason to read: they would be serving as a lawyer, judge, witness, or jury member in our mock trial. The UH Richardson School of Law was kind enough to lend us their practice courtroom for our trial, and we were honored to have Judge Paccaro, Attorney Hochman, and Ms. Soares in the audience!

Huck, Jim, and the Dr. 

Mark Twain on the stand

The plan, as devised by the clerk

A focused jury takes notes!

Pap on the stand

After the trial, Judge Paccaro and Mr. Hochman were able to give the students direct feedback about their roles in the trial.  They commented on procedural elements that could be improved--like the attorneys speaking to one another directly across the table--as well as strong lines of questioning by the prosecution in particular.

Feedback from Mr. Hochman and Judge Pacarro

In the end, the jury unanimously found Mark Twain not guilty of promoting racism, which is consistent with an astute reading of the novel.  However, from an educational standpoint, the verdict was irrelevant to me.  When I saw the attorneys on both teams combing through the novel looking for opportunities to verbally goad their opponents, or calling "objection your honor--where is that stated in the book?" I could tell students were ingraining in themselves the importance of using in-text citations, a concept I have struggled to get through in a traditional classroom.

The whole crew

In his iconic youtube talk Sir Ken Robinson challenges teachers to create schools that don't kill creativity. For 3 hours today while students were engaged and listening to one another, practicing public speaking, staying in character, and responding to text-focused questions on the fly, I felt confident MPX10s had avoided that pitfall of education.