Life Lessons In To Kill A Mockingbird

While school may teach lessons, they are certainly not valuable life lessons. Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird repeatedly shows the ineffectiveness of the education system in a child’s morals. To Kill A Mockingbird takes place in the Great Depression era in Alabama, where education was not the best. Teachers would only seek to teach their classes average, everyday lessons rather than valuable life teachings. Throughout the novel, Scout and Jem learn more and more valuable life lessons through real life scenarios than they ever would have ever learned at school. They learn morals such as courage, selflessness, and equality through their own lives. Therefore, real life experiences give more valuable lessons than education to Scout and Jem.

Persecution comes from people who are prejudiced” (Lee 329). While this may seem like a useful life lesson, Scout realizes the clear hypocrisy in her lesson. Like every other citizen of Maycomb, she is prejudiced against black people. Even though she is teaching her students that prejudice and persecution is wrong, she is participating in those very activities at home. She heard her third grade teacher after Tom Robinson’s trial, she thought “it’s time somebody taught ‘em a lesson, they were gettin’ way above themselves, an’ the next thing they think they can do is marry us” (Lee 331). Her own teacher’s thoughts on trial prove that the education system is flawed in Maycomb. Her statements against persecution directly contradict what she said about Tom Robinson. Herself and her students have been taught by Maycomb’s society that prejudice is okay. Jem and Scout, on the other hand, have been taught that all people should be treated equally through Atticus. So in the end, the education system does not teach actual life lessons to everyone. And once again, Scout and Jem learned their life lessons through real life experiences. By the end of the story, Scout realizes the societal division between races is wrong and is not

She realizes that even school itself is not teaching the fair and right ideas. The true main teacher in To Kill A Mockingbird was Scout and Jem’s experiences. Real life experience is the greatest teaching tool Scout and Jem have. At its core, To Kill A Mockingbird is a coming of age story, and Scout and Jem mature in both age and their values. They have learned how to view things from other people’s perspective, equality, and the flawed education system. So in