Jones Dickover
Mrs. McDowell
Lit/Comp 9A
17 February 2023
The importance of To Kill a Mockingbird in schools
A school is a place where children go to learn about reading, writing, arithmetic, and, most importantly, right from wrong. But in recent years, certain lessons and books have been deemed "hateful" and "racially prejudiced". In particular, Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird has seen the most backlash for its harsh language and mature content. To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic novel about a young girl and her experiences living in the deep south during the Great Depression. In the story, a black man is put on trial for the rape of a white woman. As one can expect, there are many racist comments and words in the book. Though some may argue whether To Kill a Mockingbird should be taught in school, it should be included in school's curriculum as
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When people think about the deep south in the 1930s, one of the first things that come to mind is racism and how African Americans were treated. For example, when Miss Maudie Atkinson said, "as I waited I thought, Atticus Finch won’t win; he can’t win, but he’s the only man in these parts who can keep a jury out so long in a case like that" (Lee 289), It shows how people slowly start changing their ways and start to see that race doesn’t matter and that justice should always be the number one priority in a courtroom. This is similar to the Scottsboro Boys video, which stated that the state of Alabama pursued the case even after one of the women who accused the men of rape redacted her former claim. This is important because it shows how the government didn’t truly care about bringing justice to the women; instead, they wanted to put the men in jail just for being black. This proves that To Kill a Mockingbird should be taught in schools due to the amount of history it teaches