Reasons For The Banning Of To Kill A Mockingbird

To Ban a Mockingbird At any given moment, a high school student may be bemoaning their homework assignment of reading chapters 3-5 of To Kill a Mockingbird. Fair enough. It’s a terribly slow read. Concurrently–it’s an essential Southern epic detailing the arbitrary nature of a Black man on trial for the rape of white woman from the point of view of the attorney’s eight year old child. The novel, as read in English classes, is frequently taught hand-in-hand with History courses, when discussing Great Depression-era racism. Sounds like a crucial cornerstone in high school curriculum, right? Turns out, many disagree. In fact, To Kill a Mockingbird is not the only novel to be critiqued for its inclusion in classrooms. Many classics have undergone scrutiny for themes such as violence, sex, and/or graphic language. Book banning has become an ignorant and anti-progressive practice, most frequently seen in schools, often in an attempt to ‘protect’ children from certain ideas or concepts they are likely already familiar with.

A Tennessee school board banned Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel ‘Maus’ which retells the story and details of the Holocaust using the widely familiar analogy of cat, the Nazis, and mouse, the Jews. Reasons for removal were cited as graphic violence and depictions of nudity. What the censors fail to realize is that the Holocaust cannot be remembered properly without these depictions. When these events are downplayed, the horror of the Holocaust is not being taught appropriately, despite said censors remaining adamant that justice is being done to how this genocide is being presented to students. Journalist Sean Reichbach insists that educators ought to “promote discussions about hard topics instead of stifling them,” and “work to create a more inclusive and conversational book scene.” However, it isn’t classics that are being