November 3, 2023
"I don’t think that White authors and White characters should tell the narratives of African American people. The usefulness of the book has run its course."
Said English teacher Verena Kuzmany, quoted in "Students hated ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ Their teachers tried to dump it. Four progressive teachers in Washington’s Mukilteo School District wanted to protect students from a book they saw as outdated and harmful. The blowback was fierce" (WaPo).
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150 comments:
I guess this isn't book banning so it's ok now?
My daughter is reading TKAM in school right now. She's enjoying it.
Sounds like the four “progressive” teachers are in need of a come to Jesus meeting where the relationship between employee and employer is deconstructed enough to facilitate a better understanding of their role.
The book is not a "narrative of African American people". It is a narrative of white people in the South in Harper Lee's time and their response to an event involving an African American. Somebody has to get over making everything into something it's not.
they are SO RIGHT.. NO Book that was not written THIS WEEK, should EVER be read.. By ANYBODY
Since nearly ALL of our buildings are fireproof now we should use firemen to TAKE CARE of these EVIL OLD BOOKS
I don't think that male authors should tell the narratives of female people.
I don't think that 45-year-old authors should tell the narratives of 44-year-old people.
I don't think real authors should tell the narratives of fictional people.
Come to think of it, I don't think.
Only by Ignoring the Past, will we be able to redo all those things !
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
WAR (against russia) IS PEACE
FREEDOM (or speech, religion, or to bare arms and heads) is SLAVERY
Actually, the world's had more than enough of black Woe-B-Us narratives regardless of who tells them.
I recommend that the kids read Tom Wolfe's "Back to Blood." They'll love the opening chapter which takes place in Florida.
I was lucky enough to miss the enshrinement of "Mockingbird" as something every kid should be read. Why aren't teachers having kids read great literature of the Western Civilization. Are kids assigned Alice in Wonderland? Or Winds in the Willows? Those are books every kid should read.
Kids don't need to read literature teaching "Tolerance". Its not 1972 anymore. Kids get hammered with "Don't be a racist" "Don't be a Bigot" 24/7/365 from every media outlet. We should be teaching children and teenagers great literature and the values of western civilization.
Mockingbird and Holocaust books aren't needed. Lets move on.
The last time I read Mockingbird was ... 20 years ago? ... when my son was homeschooling it. The narrative style -- it's from Scout's perspective? -- was strained. It was a self-conscious book that neither one of us enjoyed.
Instead of saying White authors shouldn't tell AA stories, maybe we should say that stories that were overhyped because the subject matter was important should fade away.
The problem is the belief of teachers that the right books can magically enlighten students and resolve social issues. To Kill a Mockingbird has long been the remedy of choice for racism, but somehow racism has remained a force in American life. Now they want to swap in some other book to work its presumed magic on a new generation.
I would prefer that they walk away from "problem" books that don't solve problems but generate make kids feel bad about themselves and society, but there is always another problem book out there to teach a new generation to welcome immigrants or to support trans kids.
"Four progressive teachers in Washington’s Mukilteo School District wanted to protect students from a book they saw as outdated and harmful."
So, a story about a white lawyer defending a black man falsely accused is harmful.
Got it, harmful to their agenda, yes.
They'll tell you what they really think.
White or white? So diversitist.
Albinos? How very Rainbowesque.
Africa is a continent.
And vice versa bitch. All negro literature for you or GTFO.
How to tell kids that writing as a form of universal communication doesn’t work, and appear virtuous.
Another version of the ultra-stupid: “White people can’t play the blues.”
This idiot idea can’t be put to rest.
Let each people relate through their own literature. Let them all return to the lands from which they fled or were sold into bondage. What a fucking century.
The harm they saw was to their agenda, not the students.
They see a book about a white man defending a falsely accused black man as problematic.
They'll tell you what they really think.
(might be a 2nd posting, m.c.)
I tremble for my country. Idiots don't realize, and aren't taught, that Mockingbird was a white story, not a black story, intended to appeal to the conscience of whites to be better.
This bullshit started when Styron published The Confessions of Nat Turner, and was accused of stealing "their" story. He pointed out that, more than a century after Turner's execution, no one had yet told the story. Poor guy even had to publicly debate actor Ossie Davis. The protest made David Wolper's planned movie of the novel impossible--so of course millions of people were denied seeing the humanity in Turner dramatized on the big screen (and a dozen black actors given choice roles, including the lead).
Average IQ is no longer 100. It's probably now 63.
I'm totally OK with literary apartheid as proposed by this idiot. The obvious consequence is that no Black writer should waste time trying to offer work that pretends to represent or understand White people.
The world has gone cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
This attitude is similar to the recent comments by the Native American cast member in the new Scorsese film “Killers of the Flower Moon” when he/she/they/it got all offended that the show “was told from a white perspective”.
Ok, you’re entitled to your opinion I suppose, but I don’t need to hear it. If you’re so offended, don’t act in the show. Or don’t pay to see it. Or how about this, write your own damn movie script from whatever “perspective” you prefer.
Otherwise, STFU because I don’t care. Oh, and fuck off.
"I was lucky enough to miss the enshrinement of "Mockingbird" as something every kid should be read. Why aren't teachers having kids read great literature of the Western Civilization. Are kids assigned Alice in Wonderland? Or Winds in the Willows? Those are books every kid should read."
Well... That's a take.
To Kill a Mockingbird is a much better example of Great Literature of the Western Civilization than either of those examples. (imho)
Stupid. Good storytelling is good no matter what color the author’s skin is. Have we really fallen this far from civilization into barbarism? Do these idiots actually want their children to learn to read words instead of skin tone? Will they enforce the corollary and ban books by black authors who write white characters into a story?
I thought we all agreed that “separate but equal” was a racist lie. Imagine if no white people had ever read Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
This is what Progressives mean when they say they want a dialogue.
I'm truly thankful "the blowback was fierce." But Progressives never stop, never take no. They'll be back banning something else or this again.
The USA DIY Kit: Some disassembly required.
gilbar said...
they are SO RIGHT.. NO Book that was not written THIS WEEK, should EVER be read.. By ANYBODY
Since nearly ALL of our buildings are fireproof now we should use firemen to TAKE CARE of these EVIL OLD BOOKS
I'm sorry but your satire has been overtaken by real world events in the last couple of months. A Canadian school district has already banned all books written before 2004. Cut & paste link provide below:
https://www.deseret.com/2023/9/20/23881250/canada-public-school-book-ban
The reason you want kids to read great literature and not crap like Mockingbird is because you want to reach the intelligent 25 percent of students who can appreciate it. And will learn to like great literture. However, most people aren't "readers" or if they do read - they like mediocre slop.
Sorry to be blunt but its the truth.
The people who hate "artsy-fartsy stuff" can only be taught western values through movies and Comic books.
female people
Female by sex (i.e. genetic), gender (i.e. attribute), expression (e.g. clothes), or identity (i.e. empathy)?
This is what Progressives mean when they say they want a dialogue.
In left-wing ideology, there can be only one... we're the rulers of humanity.
I've read the book a couple of times and have the movie on Blue-Ray DVD. One of my all time favorites. For a book that takes place in 1930s Alabama, I would say it is a rather positive depiction of race relations. Atticus Finch was a role model for me, and the book was probably one of many factors which led me to want to become a lawyer.
No teacher assigns the full book. In it, Atticus' relatives fought for the South, and he pontificate at length about how only black and whit men, but no women, should be jurors.
Gee, I thought the two main characters, the lawyer and his daughter, were European-Americans.
Isn't this what Scott Adams and Dilbert got cancelled for?
OK By me. No black authors writing about any white topics, either. Right? What is good for the goose is good for the gander.
Fuck 'em
I have no problem separating myself from African-American people. Living in Puerto Rico, it comes naturally. On the other hand I do wake up next to a black woman most mornings. And then associate with people in various shades from dark black to light white all day long. Never paid much attention to it.
John Henry
If this were to continue this to its logical end, we'd get to a point where authors would only be allowed to write stories about themselves. Every artist would become a Woody Allen.
I assumed both the book and movie were intended to improve me, and have never read or watched.
I gathered it's the archetypal White Savior tale.
It was required in my son's public HS, but neither he nor his friends of all races thought much of it.
Since the topic of the D Party and Jews came up recently, I can recommend J H Kunstler's latest at Clusterfuck Nation. See what you think.
African American or African-American? The former are Americans of African heritage. The latter are 1/2 Americans in Diversity taxonomy.
Progressive ignorance has no limits. They certainly are a bottomless pit of rejection of talent, literature, and art.
Get Smart on TV had a two-episode series Tequila Mockingbird. It took place in Mexico had an obscure and forgotten plot with too many characters, centered on recovering it.
Decades ago, To Kill a Mockingbird was prescribed reading by the same sort of 'educators' that want to remove it from their prescribed list today. Good! But please go one step further and remove the elementary school prescribed reading list entirely. Stop indoctrinating children!
Another version of the ultra-stupid: “White people can’t play the blues.”
In the current podcast of History or Rock n Roll in 500 songs (discussed a couple days back) Andrew Hickey accuses Janis Joblin of "minstrelsy" for singing "Piece of my heart" the way she did.
Aretha Franklin's sister could sing it. But, if I follow his logic, not Joblin because Aretha's sister say it first. Or something like that.
He also went on and on about how fat Joblin was. While she could have lost a pound or two. I never remember thinking of her as "fat".
John Henry
It's all marketing - if you can eliminate thousands of competing books on grounds that have nothing to do with quality, you can probably sell your own crummy book.
Average IQ is no longer 100. It's probably now 63.
It's defined as 100 with a standard deviation of 15, though how you're supposed to calibrate it is not specified.
If you have three distinct racial groups like the US you can do that but you don't get a normal (bell-shaped) distribution, but one with three peaks, and whatever it used to measure, it no longer does.
As far as I can tell from Google results, they've renormed the US 3-peak population to 100, and both the smart people and the dumb people have moved closer to 100 than they were before, a purely mathematical effect. It used to be just normed on white people, with other groups measured as if they were white people but not included in the calibration.
I don't recall reading To Kill A Mockingbird in school. Or ever.
I do recall having to read an awful lot of dreck in school. School actually ruined me for many authors. Orwell, Shute and Conrad are three that have become particular favorites of mine but it took a long time after HS graduation where I was willing to even consider reading them. Now I re-read and re-read them.
Were there any books in HS that people enjoyed reading? I was a pretty voracious and eclectic reader even back then. But not a single assigned author has ever appealed to me outside of school. Other than the 3 mentioned above.
John Henry
One of the best lessons from TKAM is captured in Scout's identifying her schoolmate's father in the mob who wanted to Lynch Tom Robinson. She sees him and calls him by name, "Hey, Mr. Cunningham," and in doing so makes him an individual accountable for his own actions rather than a part of a mob.
So many people today are hiding in the mob.
Will they rename the Atticus Finch?
I have been a reader of this blog for years, but have never commented. This is the first post that I felt the need to add my two cents. I consider TKAM to be one of the definitive books I have ever read. I read it first in high school in l970 and it is still in my personal library. It was the first book that started me down the path eventually to law school. It is an example of Southern genre literature. It is not a story about blacks nor is it a story about women who lie about rape. (Some people have tried to remove it in the past from school shelves for that reason also.) It is relating an injustice taking place in a small Alabama town during the depression, and Atticus' attempts to stop it. And it is more accurate and true to life that you might imagine, especially if you do not have experience living in the deep south pre ww2. The teacher is Washington is very narrow minded if she cannot see that.
P.S. I think W in the Willows is great lit, too, and under read.
"The narrative style -- it's from Scout's perspective? -- was strained."
Heavily sanitized by a northern liberal editor for a northern liberal audience. Atticus was more like Go Set a Watchman in real life.
But these simpletons cannot fathom how a man who uses the N word could overcome his own prejudices in the interest of justice. People want their cut and dried morality tales.
Anyway, maybe kids are tired of the sanctimony. We can only hope.
I do wake up next to a black woman most mornings. And then associate with people in various shades from dark black to light white all day long. Never paid much attention to it.
There is diversity in numbers.
I read it years ago when there wasn't much on television and lots of people, not just bookish people, looked to books for their entertainment. As I recall it was okay, but IIRC I enjoyed "The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters" a lot more. That was another Pulitzer Prize winning novel from the same era. Remember when Pulitzer Prize novels were pro-American and a good read. Back then the Oscar winning Best Picture was fun to see. Nowadays critically successful movies and books aren't just anti-American, they're more like anti-human propaganda....How do feminists feel about Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina? They were both written by a man. Does Margaret Mitchell get any credit for writing about how unfairly white women of the slave owning class were treated by white men? Is it more of an imaginative leap for a man to portray the inner life of a woman or the inner life of a man of another race?
Actually its Scouts narrative, she recounts a summer in her small, rural southern town in her youth.
It would be less racist to burn all the books.
Thanks for commenting, Delmar.
It's not a sin to kill TKAM from a required reading list. Never should've been on such a list, it's not great (or even that good) literature. Huck Finn, on the other hand, I would fight for any day of the week: the fountainhead of modern American fiction. Any 14 year old should enjoy it, and could profit from reflecting on it.
The problems modern progressives describe with _To Kill a Mockingbird_ are not about race. They object to Atticus addressing risks to his family using firearms ( a rifle against a rabid dog ) . They object to the ridicule the transgendered or transvestites are subjected to. ( Jem's "morphodite" snow sculpture.) They object to the othering of the mentally ill. (Boo Radley) And the whole idea about giving a boy -- a CHILD -- a lethal weapon and carte blanch against any prey or target in the whole wide world EXCEPT "mockingbirds" is wholly unconscionable and certainly should not be highlighted via the title of the work.
Oh, I forget. TEACHERS object to _TKaM_ because it glorifies homeschooling by suggesting that Scout could (contrary to all pedagogic research) could be taught to read by Calpurnia (an oppressed and repressed victim of slavery or at least victim of post Civil War "serfdom" )
If a black servant can teach a child to read, what point is there in public schools at all? This is not a question that profession educators want a classroom full of impressionable readers to ask.
What we are seeing in higher education is more and more students coming to college having absolutely no idea of literary history (to the point of not knowing which centuries books come from) and have almost NO books from their high school experience that they love. Most of the English majors turn out to have been huge readers on their own, and usually very much read to by their parents.
Stupid identity politics has so polluted everything that people don't have any idea of how to talk about a book besides the most shallow political readings possible (i.e., this "a white author wrote a black character"), and almost anything that you can think of that is aesthetically accomplished or historically significant falls afoul of some newly invented identity-politics rule and is put on the Index expurgatorius.
The student evals for the Vikings and Old Norse course I taught this past spring were filled with shocking unintentional admissions about how much student have come to hate 20th and 20st-century literature because there is NOTHING TO TALK ABOUT except various virtue-signals. Students said they loved me class because we talked about CHARACTERS and THEMES: why on earth weren't they talking about those things in EVERY previous English class?
My only hope is that maybe a lot of these kids will read great works later in life and appreciate them much more than they would as a set text in high school (the Scarlet Letter is a great book, but most 8th-grades end up hating it because the prose if very difficult for them). But I fear that the love of reading is being crushed out of many students, and that is just a huge loss for them personally, whatever it means to our culture as a whole.
The most zealous monitors of who's allowed to write about what are Young Adult authors. They're clearing out the competition so their own books -- attuned to 2023 standards -- are assigned in school.
Mukilteo is a plurality white district with significant Hispanic and Asian enrollment and quite a few students from immigrant families. Nine percent of enrollment is Black/African American.
Delmar O'Donell said...
And it is more accurate and true to life that you might imagine, especially if you do not have experience living in the deep south pre ww2. The teacher is Washington is very narrow minded if she cannot see that.
This appears to be the person they're quoting;
https://courses.washington.edu/sebald/biographies/verenakuzmany.html
She is Austrian by birth and had never been to the US prior to the year 2000. Her opinion is just so much fart gas, but it's what WaPo wanted to hear so they published it.
TKAM is a "narrative of African American people" much like Roots is a narrative of white men.....
You silly Americans with your complicated struggles over progress and the forward-thinking way of life! These problems are not a problem. Just do what we do and remove every book written before 2008 from your school libraries!
This is a part of the progressive mindset against "appropriating other people's culture". Although it's apparently fine for a Senator or Professors to identify as "Indian" (Fauxcahontas and Ward Churchill I'm looking at you). Or for Rachel Dolazelle to identify as Black.
These teachers argue that only a Black man can write about the Black experience. I've seen the same sentiment expressed on a tee shirt "It's a black thing, you wouldn't understand".
Bigotry and clannishness exists everywhere. But I'll stick with the late Tom T. Hall, a country singer and song writer known as "The Story Teller". In his song "She Gave Her Heart to Jethro", Hall writes "Now some will condemn me for cursing, but a man's not writing if he can't relate all the things he sees in his life." A good novelist not only writes what he or she sees, but also creates worlds that the reader may have never seen. And the reader's life is richer for it.
The movie is all about Atticus but the book is all about Scout. When I first read it, I got at least halfway through the book before it fully registered that Scout was a girl. I have an alternative theory about who killed Bob Ewell at the end. Atticus thinks his son Jem did it. Sheriff Tate thinks Boo Radley did it, convinces Atticus, and then comes up with the plan to sweep that fact under the rug. I think it was Scout, who no one suspects.
"But not a single assigned author has ever appealed to me outside of school. Other than the 3 mentioned above."
Not even Twain?! Heavens. I've been nuts about Twain since second grade.
They could rewrite it as a Jewish-Muslim tale. The father/attorney would be (HideInThe)Atticus Finch.
Atticus, Scout, Boo Radley are white. But the villains in the book are also white. The father of the lying rape "victim" may be the worst, but then there's the racist jurors who convicted a black man under a beyond a reasonable doubt standard that was never met, the mob who intended to lynch the accused before trial, but was shamed out of it by Atticus and his kids, and the police who just had to execute the innocent black man while he was "trying to escape" because, as Atticus noted, he would have won an appeal because of the inadequacy of the evidence presented. There is no black "hero" or "villain", only a victim who died because of racist whites.
This is one of my favorite books, amazingly coming out of the south at a time when segregation was still practiced and lynching still occurred. It is a story about white people, the bad ones AND those who tried to be good. For the commenters here who have never read it, you are missing something powerful. If you would rather listen to an audio version. I highly recommend the version narrated by Sissy Spacek (sp?). The movie is great but leaves out so much backstory that you miss the whole backstop. Because, no, this isn't solely a book about racism. It is a character study of a complex principled man and a coming of age story of two kids. And it is a story about the tragedy of a man who was mentally damaged by his family and overcame it to save a child's life and the wise decision made about him afterward.
On a side note, since when do people believe they have a proper foundation to publish their opinion about at book without having read it? Oh, yeah, since we have social media where anyone can opine anytime on anything with no foundation needed. I forgot.
The choice of books being promoted today is a reflection of --has this term been used before?-- the D'oprahfication of America.
The choice of books being promoted today is a reflection of --has this term been used before?-- the D'oprahfication of America.
I've come to the conclusion that black people need to speak for black people and the outcry against TKAMB is correct. I agree with Delmar that the book isn't really about blacks or racism (people are probably thinking about the movie), but about growing up in a small southern town. But the reason its assigned reading in Mukiltio (sic) is because its supposed to teach tolerance and anti-racism.
Whites needs to get past the "WHite Savior complex". If you want to read about the black experience, then read a black author. BTW, this all part of blacks rejecting the Boomer "We're a colorblind society, MLK is hero" narrative.
The rumor has always been that Capote helped his friend Lee write the book. I doubt that's true, but its also true she never followed this novel up with another great book.
So, white people should not tell the narratives about AfAm people? Should AfAm authors tell the narratives about white (or Asian or Hispanic) people? Woops, how not anti-racist that second question is. My bad.
Remarkably blunt even measured by the fare that's become common as the daily dose of straight-up racism from the CRT-inspired 'teachers' writing this stuff. But it's all the logical conclusion of academic 'ethnic studies' ad DEI programs, as Kendi is not shy about pointing out.
What's different today is that the wildly anti-Semitic craziness that's taken hold on American campuses has put all of this in-your-face racist 'anti-racism' in a much harsher light, one that's shocked so many moderately liberal folks out of their former silence. It's not just the obvious overlap between DEI/BLM/CRT and anti=Semitism, but how it also overlaps with the just as obvious anti-Asian racism in academia that resulted in the Harvard/UNS decisions last June and the response that got form the same DEI/BLM/CRT crowd. As some may recall, all of that is playing out at the high school level too, as the obvious anti-Asian bias at TJ High School in Virginia showed. That case is currently pending in the Supreme Court, Dkt no. 22-1280, awaiting a decision on the petition for cert.
It does feel like the center cannot hold, in that what has been the academic status quo for so long (racism is fine so long as you express it in ever-so-anodyne DEI language) can't go on. The lefty/progressive coalition that gave us that state of affairs as the status quo seems to be braking down, with this bout of anti-Semitism being the final straw.
Time will tell. Stay tuned.
“The usefulness of the book has run its course," says one of the teachers, unaware that she has just revealed their unspoken agenda.
TKAM portrays genuine racism and genuine opposition to racism, and we can't have that, lest people grok that today's "microaggressions" and "whites can't not be racist no matter what" (that is, what the teachers call "21st century racism") is just cynical, amoral grift, at best, or, more likely, one sojourn of the Marxist long march.
Separately: It was rather amusing that the author credited the teachers with having typed 1,267 words and "using impeccable grammar." Should we expect less?* Also, isn't valuing impeccable grammar racist? After all, the teachers were advocating for replacing TKAM with The Hate U Give...
*Sadly, yes.
In answer to John henry's query, I can't recall a single HS assigned reading that I enjoyed or would like to reread.
That may be in part because I had probably read a lot of them on my own anyway, and they all blur now.
I faked my way through Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, and Scarlet Letter that have been mentioned here before, somewhere between 9th and 12th. I devoured milhist and fiction by the shelf, and the big three of postwar SF (in my group's eyes)--Asimov, Clarke, and RAH.
Spent my hard-earned and gift monies on my own largely paperback library, along with a good number of hardbacks, which I still have.
I never made all A's, but any A's I did make were probably in English and History (which was still a thing when I grajiated in '71).
Some people and groups cannot distinguish between reality and fiction. Unfortunately, they don't know who they are.
Agreed. TKMB is not about blacks. It's a story both about Whites, and about learning the world as you grow up.
Already purchased a copy of Wind in the Willows to read to my grandson. Probably another two years before he is ready for it.
I always liked To Kill a Mockingbird and especially the atmospheric movie, perhaps even more so. But I can imagine it might seem dated today. It played a role in civil rights dialogue in the '60s and '70s, and possibly later. But perhaps the teacher who said it has run its course has a point. It probably seems a little patronizing, I would imagine. And it was always sentimental; but so what?
They should read 1984 or Animal Farm, instead. Could still be a need there.
I disagree with Ms. Kuzmany’s assertion about white authors and characters telling black people’s stories, but she may well be right that the usefulness of the book has run its course. It’s not a very good book, though an influential one in its time. Unfortunately whatever Ms. Kuzmany replaced it with would probably be worse.
So this article in the Post is a recap/update on a two year old story? The book was taken off the required reading list in Jan. 2022 but is still available as optional for the teachers to use.
Why? Have the cops not shot a Black guy for pointing a cell phone at them recently or some such? You racists need to get busy. This Jew/Arab thing is distracting from the normal concerns that sell papers to the self-righteous and they're left with warmed-over mush like this to titillate their indignations.
Also, a search on banning Mockingbird brings up a host of steamed headlines related to a school in Mississippi doing it for essentially the same reasons a couple of years back.
It's just so darned hard to keep up, but I can only hope that Gregory Peck doesn't get the sharp end of the race baiter's harpoon. He seemed like a cool dude.
“As far as I can tell from Google results, they've renormed the US 3-peak population to 100, and both the smart people and the dumb people have moved closer to 100 than they were before, a purely mathematical effect. It used to be just normed on white people, with other groups measured as if they were white people but not included in the calibration.”
A long way of saying that most of us are now smarter, through no work on our part. Great news!
We should not have books any more - too problematic.
"It is not a story about blacks nor is it a story about women who lie about rape."
Right. Which is to say, it is a lie about blacks not raping white women.
the archetypal White Savior tale
Slavery, Diversity, and a civil war to repair their choice.
Ace posted this movie trailer yesterday. Very appropriate for the idea of Black Voices.
The ultimate subdivision will always be the individual:
Every artist would become a Woody Allen.
Heheheh... Thanks for that, loudogblog!
More seriously - are we to take her and her fellows' point to be that it's only black "voices" that can't be expressed by others, or that no unique experience can be expressed by anyone who hasn't undergone it personally? The latter is just a logical (uh oh, that might be my privilege talking) extrapolation from the former - but if we follow that guideline, why bother to try to empathize with anyone's experience at all?
I guess that would be an extension of Robin d'Angelo's "all white people are irredeemably racist and unable to understand how much they exhaust black people, but they must nevertheless spend their entire lives trying futilely both to overcome their racism and to understand black people - but without talking to any black people about it as that will only exhaust them further" thing. We are all required to try - futilely - to empathize with others, no matter how different we are from one another.
Actually... that makes perfect sense. It is 100% true that I cannot truly understand the experience of even my husband, with whom I've spent more than half my life, yet it benefits us both that I try.
The difference between what we do as human beings trying - futilely - to understand one another and what d'Angelo says is the duty of white people is that we undertake the first out of acknowledgement of our common humanity, and the second out of an external requirement that we (some of us) atone for something, whether we want to or not.
It makes me wonder about her relationship with her parents, as it sounds like textbook emotional abuse: "you can never please me, but you'd better damn well keep trying, but I'll continue to belittle you for failing, but don't you dare stop trying..."
Well, of course, progressive educators will push an ideology rather than explore nuanced themes in literature. They're not teachers, merely indoctrinators pushing a limited point of view about what should constitute a separate and distinct BIPOC identity. So, throw interesting books like TKAM and Huck Finn overboard.
Off-topic: I completely agree with some of the commenters' preferences. I most treasure books of my childhood (often read aloud to me) - WITW, the Jungle Book, Just So Stories. I regaled my kids with them years ago because by imitating the animals in different voices I could bring out their unique qualities, flaws and dilemmas.
E Pluribus Unum is getting to be a tough sell in academe. It may even be illegal.
Don’t know the grade the kids were in who hated this very easy to read book. Hopefully they aren’t in high school where they should be reading Shakespeare and The Odyssey and Canterbury Tales so they can learn something. Perhaps they are African American where the data would indicate they can barely read at all.
"The blowback was fierce".
... as it should have been.
It's so obvious that "To Kill a Mockingbird" is not "a narrative of African American people".
I feel embarrassed to have to point that out to readers who had that impression. Or did they actually read the book? I guess perhaps not.
I will not board that ship of fools.
Students who hate it may be picking up on their teachers' sentiments. Regardless of whether they would come to like it or appreciate it, they're going to complain about having to read anything longer than a tweet. They are going to see characters who, on the surface, are nothing like them. It's up to the teacher to show them otherwise. Teachers who don't get it can't teach it.
Interracial animosity is unwarranted. I'm seeing quite a bit of it, often from people in positions of influence. People should make an effort to call this out when they encounter it.
Are kids assigned Alice in Wonderland? Or Winds in the Willows? Those are books every kid should read.
The Alice books should be read to young children for entertainment and then read, guided by an instructor, later for their political satire.
You're the Teacher. The Educator's race don't matter. You're there to do a job.
But the kids in American classrooms run the gamut from all white to all black and brown. And your job is to teach them a story written by a white woman, for a white audience, about white people, and how they coped with a crime, carried out by a white man, and other whites in his community. I think you can see how, even in all-white classrooms, that could not only get a little uncomfortable but completely go off the rails, today.
At one point, Scout says a room smells like a "clean Negro." Blacks are always more-than-a-little curious to know what that means. What do you say when they start calling Scout a racist? Like gender studies, is that a conversation you really have to have in the classroom today?
Or how about Dolphus Raymond, the white man who pretends to be an alcoholic, so other white people will look down on him for being a drunk, and NOT for having children with a black woman. See, he's fooling everybody white, since we all know, back-in-the-day, love between the races is just the kind of "crazy" thing a disgusting alcoholic would get himself mixed up in. Again: Is this necessary for today's kids to explore? Why?
I'll stop at Tom Robinson. He might as well not be there. He's dumb enough not to be there. After the verdict is read he isn't in the story anymore. He's killed after he tries to get out of prison, but, then and throughout, he's got no friends, he's got no family, there's not a single black community member that cares about him. Where in America has that ever been the case? If someone points out that - hey - the TV show "Friends" also features all white people in a New York with no black people, you're in trouble. Woody Allen movies might start coming up and oh my God. When, really, Tom Robinson could be anybody. Mexican, Chinese, anybody white people didn't like. And blacks don't always like being stand-ins for that. So there's another minefield for you to deal with. Do you see what I'm getting at?
Teachers are saying "To Kill A Mockingbird" has outlived its usefulness. Those of you looking for a more colorblind America should be rejoicing that we're past that era. We don't need Atticus Finch: The Educator's race don't matter.
Blacks seem to be edging toward a race war. Books that emphasize color blindness are being eliminated.
I have never read TKAM. Somehow, it was not taught in the years I was in Jr High/High School.
BLM Chickens coming home... on Sundays when Chick-fil-A is closed.
cONCLUSION... Chick-fil-A closing on Sundays is racist.
That's the ticket.
Matt Taibbi via X · 1h
A student didn’t want to read “To Kill a Mockingbird” because it wasn’t “written about her — or for her.” That describes pretty much every book I ever read and loved. Isn’t part of the fun of reading losing yourself in an unfamiliar world?
Teachers are failing students.
Dumb Broad meets Great Book. Nothing interesting or new here.
The article is a case study in the difference between liberal and progressive today. The liberal teachers wanted to keep the book at least as an option, flawed but powerful; and the progressive teachers wanted to ban it outright and substitute other books more in keeping with their ideology.
apartheid
Separatiom is treated by social justice that dictates a genocidal choice and the progressive precedent is to establish a religion... constitution that enshrines diversity, congruence, and rites under force of law.
And btw, putting up children like Greta Thunberg, pretending to lecture the world, doesn’t help either.
It would be easy to jump to the conclusion that the point that is made here is that there will be no forgiveness for Atticus Finch for his sin of whiteness. Or Harper Lee, for that matter. No matter what you do, you are forever guilty. There is no remission for your racist past. There is no difference between Atticus and Mr. Cunningham, and the world is not about us white people, anyway.
If that's what is trying to be communicated, I'd just like to say that we get the message.
Interracial animosity is unwarranted. I'm seeing quite a bit of it, often from people in positions of influence. People should make an effort to call this out when they encounter it.
I often judge a book by who is pushing it, and why. Same with movies made from books. And that was long before social media, Mr. Edd.
My son and his friends, who were assigned it, did not care for it, and I have a lot of doubt that some of his teachers were even fully literate and qualified to teach it.
Nothing I've seen here makes me regret not reading/seeing TKAM. It has been produced as a stageplay here fairly recently, so it's pretty deeply embedded in the culture by now for those who value its lessons.
Heard about this movie yet? American Fiction.
A black author gets schooled by his betters.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i0MbLCpYJPA
'At one point, Scout says a room smells like a "clean Negro." Blacks are always more-than-a-little curious to know what that means.'
The Biden remark was about as racist as anything you could say without calling him N...
But Joe's a democrat, and Jim Crow and slavery are in their bones...
"Blacks seem to be edging toward a race war. Books that emphasize color blindness are being eliminated."
Do you have any substantive data to support either of these paranoid wet-nightmares of yours?
"Interracial animosity is unwarranted. I'm seeing quite a bit of it, often from people in positions of influence. People should make an effort to call this out when they encounter it."
So you're saying we should keep our animosity intraracial?
People are motivated to seek fame or admiration of their peers. The way to achieve fame, or admiration, on the left is to find a new way to be a victim, or a way to be an even bigger victim. It’s a shame that we have such a large part of our society that rewards such fundamentally unproductive activities.
"So many people today are hiding in the mob."
That's how mobs work. Always have, always will. Not only do people hide in mobs, they lose themselves in them.
The book is not about diversity. Can all people of black relate? Can any people of albino relate? Can no people of peach ("White") relate? Diversity breeds adversity.
"...I fear that the love of reading is being crushed out of many students, and that is just a huge loss for them personally, whatever it means to our culture as a whole."
I don't think it's being crushed out of students. I think too many children and young people, whether in school or at home, are not being nurtured and encouraged to read. Previous generations fretted over the adverse influence of television on children, but today young children are equipped with super computers called smart phones--supercharged communications and game devices which never cease providing diversions to children and adults alike. Compared to the experience of being perpetually "plugged in," reading seems for many to be slow, arduous, boring...hard work with little or no reward.
I can't comment on TKaM--never read it.
But wrt high school assigned books: one of the books we were assigned was Pride and Prejudice, which I disliked intensely (who cares what Darcy thought on p75?). Several years later, I decided to give it another chance, and liked it--when I didn't have a schedule to meet or quizzes waiting for me.
I don’t think that White authors and White characters should tell the narratives of African American people.
Well, it's been over 60 years since I read the book, but I don't recall it as being "a narrative of [the] African American people." I recall it as being mostly about the Finch family: Atticus, Jem, and Scout. All of whom are White. And Boo Radley, who is also White. And maybe Bob Ewell, who is White (to the shame of my race).
Did English teacher Verena Kuzmany ever actually read the damned book?
Forturantely (sic) I was not assigned Jane Austen to read in HS. I would've regarded it as a "chick book" and hated it. Later, in middle age I read her and was able to apprecitate her wit and what a great author she was.
But some people, like Mark Twain, can never get past the teenage boy outlook and macho bluster.
So, what did I get in HS? I got Steinbeck "The Grapes of Wrath", "Watership Down", and God help me, "The Crucible". Our HS English teachers were fairly old and they were working off the old fashioned anti-anti-communist, support the workers, Leftwing agenda. I think one teacher gave us "Watership down" because its about Rabbits and kids like Rabbits.
The only book I really liked was "Lord of the Flies", which was probably assigned to us because it was about boys on a tropical island and is fairly short.
Where is Gregory Peck's Academy Award?
Many interesting comments. Crack Emcee scores some valid points. I can see how his experience of that novel might be different.....Apparently this is a favorite of people with a white, southern background. Not so much for other people.....High school kids live in their moment and have not lived through any other moments. It's probably better to assign them a well written novel of their own era than one of the golden oldies. Something sensitive about how hard it is to fit in when you're a transgendered magician of color in a dystopian society...... I had to read Silas Marner in high school, and I don't remember a thing about it except that it was a painful chore. On the other hand, we had to read a couple of plays by Shakespeare--Macbeth and Julius Caesar. It made us feel very grown up to be reading such fare. We had to memorize some of the lines, and I can still remember them......When you play a better tennis player, you become a better tennis player. When you read a writer who's smart and precise in his language, you become smarter and more precise in your language. I guess there's a point to reading good writers, but some great writers of the past like, say, Dickens or George Eliot were more prolix and had a different rhythm to their prose. They're not that accessible to today's readers.
Many interesting comments. Crack Emcee scores some valid points. I can see how his experience of that novel might be different.....Apparently this is a favorite of people with a white, southern background. Not so much for other people.....High school kids live in their moment and have not lived through any other moments. It's probably better to assign them a well written novel of their own era than one of the golden oldies. Something sensitive about how hard it is to fit in when you're a transgendered magician of color in a dystopian society...... I had to read Silas Marner in high school, and I don't remember a thing about it except that it was a painful chore. On the other hand, we had to read a couple of plays by Shakespeare--Macbeth and Julius Caesar. It made us feel very grown up to be reading such fare. We had to memorize some of the lines, and I can still remember them......When you play a better tennis player, you become a better tennis player. When you read a writer who's smart and precise in his language, you become smarter and more precise in your language. I guess there's a point to reading good writers, but some great writers of the past like, say, Dickens or George Eliot were more prolix and had a different rhythm to their prose. They're not that accessible to today's readers.
" I decided to give it another chance, and liked it--"
Nothing like high school to ruin a good book or even a whole subject. I did my real reading on the side.
We read Twain's "Pudd'nhead Wilson" in 8th grade. I still have my copy, with my notes (such as they are, for a 12 year old) in the margins.
I wonder if any schools have their eighth graders read this book today?
Now I'm wondering if "All Quiet in the Western Front" was required in HS. If it was, it's one of those I might have already read by then. It was definitely not required of me in college, but I was on the honors lit track and assumed to have read it already.
I'm pretty sure my son was required to read it in HS (graduated '03).
The recent movie version tempted me at first but the more snippets and scenes I see the less tempted I am--same same for the Napoleon flick. It's only likely to piss off the historian in me.
(Darn Blogger)
We need a finer apartheid. For example, no people of Zulu should be narrated by people of Xhosa... a pox on Mandela's house, which sustains the indelible boot print of progress. No people of black (PoB) should spread narratives of people of brown (PoB). And definitely no people of yellow (PoY), and orange (PoO), and albino (the living anti-Rainbow) - transphobic.
Left Bank of the Charles said...
the book is all about Scout. When I first read it, I got at least halfway through the book before it fully registered that Scout was a girl*.
me too! i didn't read this in school, i read it at home when i was about 12..
I remember my Shock when i realized that Scout was a girl*
Scout was a girl* Of course, looking at it with the CORRECT perspective.. Scout was NOT a girl!
If there was EVER a gender dysphoric trans child BEGGING for chemical castration and testosterone..
IT HAD TO BE SCOUT.
People should point this out to these "teachers".. They'd quickly DEMAND that it be assigned reading
F@ck them. I'm tired of the nonsense and undeserved privilege these low level thugs think they have, and the idiots that indulge them.
If they're going to assign literature in schools..
they should pick the 2 great american authors: Bret Harte and Ambrose Bierce
IS there Anything More American than The Luck of Roaring Camp and The Devil's Dictionary???
Okay,
now that i've typed this; i realize that i'll want to go back to Greensboro at some time in the future;
so we'll HAVE TO add O. Henry too
If the country wasn't 'diverse', we wouldn't have these problems.
Just sayin'.
MacBeth and Julius C. Check and check. Failed to make me a Bard fan.
I can't recall any Twain assignments . . . some stories, maybe? Poe stories and poems.
Ficta,
Not even Twain.
About 10-15 years after hs I saw a dramatization of life on the Mississippi on PBS that was great. That got me to read the book and I fell in love with it. I've probably read it a dozen or more times over the past 40 years.
Because I fell in love with this book I really tried to Fallin love with others. I really liked puddinhead Wilson. But could not even finish 5-6 other books I tried.
John Henry
The life on the Mississippi movie is here
https://youtu.be/-zyMGivS2Ys?si=tngk2dVBq1MAzD_6
I watched it 6-12 months ago and it still moved me.
Picture quality is a bit murky but just ignore that and watch the movie.
I keep thinking I should like Twain. He writes the kind of books I normally like. I admire him as a man.
I've tried but just find his books uninteresting.
John Henry
The whole point of school, should be to teach the values of western civilization. It should NOT be to confirm teenagers in their conformity and predjudices. Of course, if you challenge them some will be upset and bored. So what?
There's great literature out there. It needs to be taught. HS students go to movies and watch TV. They don't need more of that crap in book form.
BTW, its pronounced Muk-ill-tee-O. Its native American speak for "You're a clean and articulate negro".
William writes, "I guess there's a point to reading good writers, but some great writers of the past like, say, Dickens or George Eliot were more prolix and had a different rhythm to their prose. They're not that accessible to today's readers."
And that's exactly why they should be read and studied. If you aren't challenged you don't learn.
I'll stop at Tom Robinson. He might as well not be there. He's dumb enough not to be there. After the verdict is read he isn't in the story anymore.
He was a plot device, a mcguffin. Fortunately he's not a real human being, only a plot device, so it can't possibly be offensive to him.
That said - I wish this book, which I loved growing up in several places in the upper Midwest, had presented me with clearer pictures of the characters of the South. I was ignorant of them then and wish I haven't shown up with such ignorance when I finally got there.
The fact that American life is much more complicated than it seems makes me wonder about life in other countries that we tend to think of as monolithic.
I'll stop at Tom Robinson. He might as well not be there. He's dumb enough not to be there. After the verdict is read he isn't in the story anymore.
He was a plot device, a mcguffin. Fortunately he's not a real human being, only a plot device, so it can't possibly be offensive to him.
That said - I wish this book, which I loved growing up in several places in the upper Midwest, had presented me with clearer pictures of the characters of the South. I was ignorant of them then and wish I haven't shown up with such ignorance when I finally got there.
The fact that American life is much more complicated than it seems makes me wonder about life in other countries that we tend to think of as monolithic.
Blogger The Crack Emcee said...
You're the Teacher. The Educator's race don't matter. You're there to do a job.
This was the most cogent thoughtful comment I have read in my memory. Completely absent of anger resentment judgement. I completely get what you are trying to communicate without having to experience the horrific journey to earn that insight.
I think I've read the whole thread.
This book is NOT about a white person defending a wrongfully accused black person.
This book is about a PERSON standing up for societal principals and values that do not benefit him.
If this "teacher" fails to realize that this book has relevance being the specificities of the babes characters, she is not worthy to teach it.
"I don’t think that White authors and White characters should tell the narratives of African American people."
Does that apply only to Whites? Or is it a general rule?
So the play "Hamilton" is right out then?
William said...
"Apparently this is a favorite of people with a white, southern background. Not so much for other people....."
I keep having to remind certain Americans, here, that our blacks are still making "firsts," so some of these "firsts" are white's, also. Whites have been talking about To Kill A Mockingbird for decades - to the same extent their voices dominate this thread - but this is the "first" they've heard what WE think about it. When we're coming up together. So - you have to know - one of the reasons for this particular "first" is because (gulp) as usual in a racist country, whites couldn't be bothered to know what WE think about it. THEY really and truly couldn't give a damn. THEY love this book. And that's all that's mattered. To them: Teach the goddamn book. It says we're NOT racist. And we don't wanna be racists. Get it?
Which, alone, looks as racist as many of these comments from white psychics, who've gleaned black's motivations from the ether, when black, and white Teachers, are - clearly - trying to spare white people by ditching this book. And spare us all: After centuries of white provocation, BLACKS are now the ones wanting to start a race war? Michael K is offering us another "first": Flipping America's moral script, again - but in white's favor like the Confederacy - so we DON'T actually live in a world where Sylvester Stallone felt he HAD to win boxing matches against black heavy weights,...for some reason no one but white men can fathom (I'm telling you, the Devil is gonna cook your bones, Mike.)
Black opinions, and lives, haven't mattered - all the way up to today (Hey - you know what? Somebody could start a movement just over that.) So To Kill A Mockingbird becomes yet another potential classroom nightmare for today's Teacher, previously trying to prove how much progress we've made. White people are still over 60% of the United States. Black people are still just over 12. White people can still swarm over any issue they want, dominate it, and make "up" look like "down" to other white people. And usually a few blacks, for a while. And they do, that's how television makes everything look 50-50, so whites like Michael K think they're in a struggle for survival, when, in reality, they actually still ruthlessly dominate almost everything. Pretty much like Israel thinking, naturally, they have to use tanks and rockets to defeat kids throwing rocks at them.
Which I think - if I was a Teacher today - would be a great topic to discuss.
By the way, the only writer American kids need to read is Mark Twain. Just avoid anything with Huck Finn in it.
Jamie said...
"[Tom Robinson] was a plot device, a mcguffin. Fortunately he's not a real human being, only a plot device, so it can't possibly be offensive to him."
"To him"? What about the millions of blacks, reading the story, that he's a stand-in for? Are we wrong to look at him, and how he's portrayed, and think What The Fuck? He ain't like us, and we don't know anybody like him, so is this non-racist tale non-racist or not? Or is it just another example, of the wool of what-white-people-think being pulled over us - and called reality - to make themselves "happy"? And at black's expense, no less. And check out how many white people, here, want that to go on - forever. It's hard to believe you, Jamie, don't understand why Teachers would just want to avoid this whole thing. But then, you missed the whole Israel argument, too.
Marcus Arelious said, whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, you should question your position. I say, when you find yourself on the same side as Michael K, you should shoot yourself.
I'm starting to wonder about you, Girl.
Howard said...
Blogger The Crack Emcee said...
You're the Teacher. The Educator's race don't matter. You're there to do a job.
This was the most cogent thoughtful comment I have read in my memory. Completely absent of anger resentment judgement. I completely get what you are trying to communicate without having to experience the horrific journey to earn that insight.
Thanks Howard. I wish more of my time here could be as pleasant. It's kind of hard when people say things, here, like blacks still have to "prove" our intelligence to white people - with no pushback - but I'll try to do better.
Blogger Narr said...
"Now I'm wondering if "All Quiet in the Western Front" was required in HS. If it was, it's one of those I might have already read by then. It was definitely not required of me in college, but I was on the honors lit track and assumed to have read it already.
"I'm pretty sure my son was required to read it in HS (graduated '03).
"The recent movie version tempted me at first but the more snippets and scenes I see the less tempted I am--same same for the Napoleon flick. It's only likely to piss off the historian in me."
This. I watched "All Quiet on the Western Front.". Good movie, but nothing like the novel.
Then I saw the trailer for " Napolean". JFC.
TKaM was not required reading for me. I attended schools in the Northeast. Perhaps it was not that iconic there.
I recall that some Hawthorne, Twain, Shakespeare, and Chaucer were required, but they were not memorable to me. At the time, (middle and high school) I was deep into reading military history, and contemporary adult fiction. These works had much more impact than anything I read for school.
I taught TKAM for 22 years. I semi-memorized it. It does indeed have white people telling a black community’s story but that is less than a quarter of the book. It does have the “White savior” trope but it has black heroes too … particularly Calpurnia, Atticus’s housekeeper, disciplinarian, nanny, surrogate wife. Calpurnia issues a monologue on switching modes of discourse between black and white dialect that has found its way into many linguistics books.
The best reason for me in teaching it is that it is extremely well written in style, tone, use of symbolism, allegory, narration technique, plot line, character development and theme. It’s truly a masterpiece. And the narrator is a female. I needed more quality lit with a female lead than usually came in the anthologies, Shakespeare, the classics.
I read Harper Lee’s original attempt at TKAM, “Go Set a Watchman,” and it confirmed to me that Lee had some major help on turning that weak draft of a book into a masterpiece, probably Truman Capote but also her NY editor.
M Jordan said...
"[TKAM] has black heroes too … particularly Calpurnia, Atticus’s housekeeper,...."
PRODUCER: "Now we're considering you for a part in our new production. How do you feel about playing a controversial negro?"
FLAVA FLAV: "Yeah, I'm wid it. You mean somebody like Huey P. Newton or H. Rap Brown, right?"
PRODUCER: "Well, it's a servant character that chuckles a little bit, and sings"
FLAVA FLAV: "Yo, man, what? That's bullshit"
- Public Enemy, Burn, Hollywood, Burn (1990)
I think white southern writers had a different relationship with Black women than their white counterparts. They were to some extent raised by Black women. Scarlet O'Hara's Mamie was integral to her identity. Mamie is a fully formed and vivid character. She is not a racist caricature. I bet Harper Lee, Truman Capote, Faulkner, et al. had Mamies.....Literature is idiosyncratic. I never got caught up with TKAM. I did read and re-read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I thought it told the story of my grandparents' immigrant journey. Other people are welcome to find it tedious. (Both TKAM and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn were good books whose film adaptations were even better).....Some kids despite no cultural encouragement find their way to the soccer field. Some kids despite no encouragement from their peers find their way to great literature....School should teach grammar and how to express your thoughts. I don't think school can teach a love for great literature, but a lot of students will still find their way to Shakespeare or Tolstoy.....There have been any number of great Italian film directors. Not so many great writers though. Some cultures are more expressive in some idioms than others. Blacks have dominated popular music for the last century. There have been some good Black writers, but they've never captured the popular imagination the way Black musicians have.
I was raised by women, White and Black (and foreign-born and native). In the South. In the 1950s and 1960s.
I didn't care what Harper Lee had to say.
Understand that today MLK is considered to be the white man's acceptable black man and, therefore, MLK is white himself and is to be rejected.
Black authors and black characters should not be allowed to represent the black lived experience, lest they recover the African culture(s) of slavery, genocide, and tribal conflicts (e.g. Xhosa vs Zulu) in progress... and albinophobia (for social, medical, and fair weather progress).
William said...
"I think white southern writers had a different relationship with Black women than their white counterparts. They were to some extent raised by Black women,..."
You might be interested in The House I Live In, a documentary a Jewish filmmaker made about the black woman who cares for his family. The filmmaker wondered why her family hasn't progressed in the same way his has, when they pay her well, etc.. He realizes things, like how she couldn't take care of her family while taking care of his, how the racist Drug War works in America, and the awful reason she left the South in the first place. It's not the best film I've seen, but it's a good one for the right audience.
"Some kids despite no encouragement from their peers find their way to great literature...."
I've always read everything I can get my hands on, I've read some great literature, and I needed no encouragement to do it. My peers would rather play basketball. This made me a more complex person to deal with, and made their dumb asses more socially attractive and acceptable - so they all did better than I have, if they survived to adulthood. Life is weird.
Professor Ann, I'd like your perspective as an instructor of Law and Justice and Due Process regarding the _TKaM_ scene where Uncle Jack punished Scout for punching her cousin Frances.
Jack immediately starts spanking Scout, who -- in short order -- explains that Jack don't understand being a parent, that Atticus never punishes either Scout or Jem over some dispute without HEARING FROM BOTH of them. In the case of Frances, Scout had been instructed not to get riled without provocation, but, she says, "He provocated me plenty enough to knock his block off."
To me it's a child's notion of justice and fair play that echoes the point of Tom's trial. The court mustn't punish Tom after listening only to Mayella or Bob Ewell. And Scout shouldn't be spanked in the heat of the childish fight. Both sides are owed cooling off and calm moment for a fair hearing.
Seems to me to be worth teaching in US classrooms at an early age. But perhaps teachers disagree?
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