A few days ago the Washington Post ran a story about some high school teachers in Washington state who wanted to stop teaching To Kill a Mockingbird. It all started when one of the teachers was listening to a podcast:
The Black hosts of the show joked that “Mockingbird” ranked with Confederate monuments as something painful to Black people, but which White people adored. Johnson, who grew up loving “Mockingbird,” identifying with White protagonist Scout, felt shaken — and guilty.
Another one of the teachers heard complaints from her Black students:
Students shared their discomfort with the way the 1960 novel about racial injustice portrays Black people: One Black teen said the book misrepresented him and other African Americans, according to meeting records reviewed by The Washington Post. Another complained the novel did not move her, because it wasn’t written about her — or for her.
My immediate reaction to this was probably pretty common: Give me a break. It's a book about the ugliness of racism! But unlike a lot of stories like this, this one kept gnawing at me. I'd never argue that TKM is a bad book, or even an insensitive book. But it is a book that's 60 years old set in a small Alabama town nearly 100 years ago. And it got me wondering: Why do we all stay so doggedly attached to books from our own childhoods? Why do we resist so strongly the idea that while there's nothing terribly wrong with them, they may no longer be right for the present day?
It's probably been a while since you read TKM. Or maybe you've only seen the movie. What you remember is Atticus Finch, the white lawyer who defies the scorn of his neighbors to defend an innocent Black man charged with raping a white girl. A Black man named.......um, let's see. What was his name again?
Tom Robinson. But I'll be honest: I had to look that up. Tom Robinson may have been treated sympathetically by Harper Lee, but he doesn't have a whole lot of agency in the book. Hell, it's nearly 200 pages before we meet him even briefly.
Elsewhere, the n-word is used casually dozens of times. Black people are treated as superstitious, illiterate, and submissive. Calpurnia is an exception, but for all that she's still just Atticus's cook and maid. All of this might very well be historically accurate for the book's time and place, but does that mean Black kids of the present day feel like having their faces rubbed in it?
In any case, the more I thought about it the more I found myself on the side of the teachers who no longer wanted to use TKM in their classrooms. Partly this is because of how Black characters are portrayed, but it's more because we oldsters stay attached to things for way too long. This is not Shakespeare. It's just a mostly good book that has had its day and won't be missed if high school kids read something else instead. That's not so hard, is it?
The problem isn’t getting rid of this book. It’s that they’ll get rid of this book and replace it with… nothing speaking to black people’s experience at all. So sure, ditch the book of it legitimately makes black kids feel uncomfortable - I have not read it myself but I tend to doubt any argument given by a white person that begins with “it makes black people feel uncomfortable” as white people have learned that appropriating victims’ pain can further their own unrelated goals - but insist on another book about black people be put in its place.
My kids are reading a LOT more books about cultures other than white Americans than I ever did in school. I don’t think the teachers who want to drop this have a book about wealthy whites in mind as a replacement.
Are you willing to promise that no teacher anywhere will drop TKAM and replace it with nothing? Not all teachers are as committed to promoting multiculturalism as your kids’ teachers… anecdotes aren’t proof of anything.
The teachers who want to drop Mockingbird are doing so precisely because they want to teach something more relevant to Black students.
This issue is not "no teachers anywhere," that doesn't even rise to the level of a red herring. If that were the metric for removing a book from the curriculum, then no book would ever be removed, and kids today would still be struggling through Caesar's Conquest of Gaul. There are other books you can read about America in the prewar period, and more timely books you can read about racism.
My daughter was not assigned Moby Dick in her high school English classes (maybe next year!), and I think that's a greater loss than To Kill a Mockingbird.
You know, TKM was not part of my own school experience. Nor was it part of my children's school experience - they read books like "Their Eyes Were Watching God" and "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings".
I read "Native Son" in college. I do not recommend it for high school. It's kind of existential, which is nuts for a book written in the 1940.
TKM is a plank of the White Savior Ship. I mean, it recognizes a lot of problems with the treatment of black Americans, yes. And you know, I think it's a good thing if white people take action to reduce the consequences of all that bad treatment. AND, it isn't really up to us. We should be letting them lead, they are quite capable. And they don't all speak with one voice, either. There are quite a few different takes on "what should we do now?" or even "what do we want?"
It's an interesting discussion, but Kevin's post mischaracterizes the article. He writes, "A few days ago the Washington Post ran a story about some high school teachers in Washington state who wanted to stop teaching To Kill a Mockingbird."
The four teachers profiled in the article weren't satisfied with stopping teaching TKM in their classrooms. They tried to prohibt any teacher in the school district from assigning it.
There's a world of difference between deciding to find a different book for one's own students and banning other teachers from teaching TKM, if they think it's good for their students to read. And it's a way steeper hill to climb to argue that students are helped by being prohibited from encountering culturally significant books like TKM in the classroom.
The district ended up removing TKM from the required reading list for freshman and left it as an option for teachers to use. The four teachers profiled "[e]ach said they think students will be harmed because the book remains as a teaching option."
The option for the teacher becomes the requirement for the students. It’s not “optional” for the students if the teacher requires it.
And refusing to require it doesn’t “prohibit” it. It just prevents it from being a requirement.
The leftie version of book banning I guess. The right wing bans books on CRT. Actually, I don't mind either TKM or CRT books being left out of curriculums. But outright bans, in general, are a rather scary precedent. What books are next?
Right. Because curating the 12 books that will be used to teach high school english is the same as curating the 10,000 books that will be made available for kids to choose for themselves.
On saying the book isn't that deep,
the story is as seen through the eyes of a child, so it would be wrong if it were in a way deep in the adult sense, and it's from 1960, and it's based on something that actually happened to the author.
So, I would say the depth that is there is as much as the story and the circumstance can have.
This is the important question to address:
"This is not Shakespeare. It's just a mostly good book that has had its day and won't be missed if high school kids read something else instead."
Literary evaluation is quite a complex topic (even if it's not always treated as one), and there are many perspectives through which a work of literature can be viewed.
I think that most of the discussion around Mockingbird focuses on a pragmatic/political perspective. In other words, does it still (if it ever did) promote a constructive social purpose? There's nothing inherently wrong with this perspective, but I do feel that most people today give too much attention to it.
Another potential perspective could be termed mimetic: does the given literary work reflect, imitate, or accurately represent important aspects of our life and times (or of humanity in general). Again, nothing wrong with this approach. But, again, it is over-emphasized these days (hence the debate on topics like "forced diversity").
But my own main interest is with aesthetics or quality. And that's what Kevin refers to above with a comparison to Shakespeare and a comment that Mockingbird is "mostly good." I haven't read Mockingbird in decades, so it may or may not hold up well by my current standards. But I remember it, in fact, as a very good book (not just mostly good). And these are the types of questions that the woke movement, as I understand it, does not focus on in its evaluation of the arts. They are all about politics in art; they are fiercely dedicated to representation (mimesis) in art. But then they either assume that quality will naturally follow from these other concerns, or they really don't care that much about quality at all.
And therein lies my main concern. I'm not necessarily opposed to replacing Mockingbird, but what will it be replaced with? In our current cultural moment, I suspect that the emphasis will not be on quality; rather, the overriding concern will be on a book that ticks off all the acceptably antiracist checkboxes. All the emphasis these days - in the arts, in academia, in publishing - is on politics. Quality is a footnote.
And, that being the case, I personally would advise proceeding with caution. Mockingbird is a good book; it's replacement is more likely, in my opinion, to be a politically correct rather than a good book.
If you're are being made uncomfortable by the fact that people in the 1960's were not the same as people today, that seems like a teachable moment for you.
White Author, White Audience?
There is so much history about Harper Lee, (see In Cold Blood), and her output being remarkably small....is maybe also a teachable moment.
But that's not why I am here:
A White Author for a White Audience also, but really for revolutionary blacks.
Of course, Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intruder_in_the_Dust
A White Lawyer savin` the Black Man! A town bent on Lyncin`
In the Deep South!
A white Author that won a Nobel Prize!
But the black man will kick your ass from here to kingdom come with his Non-Violence.
This book is entirely too empowering for the Black Man, and, written a decade before TKaM...who is to say Intruder wasn't part of Lee's path to Mockingbird?
But a hard read and may lead to the Black Man hating the White.
This book will never be taught!
Traveller
That's a terrific book, and would be a great replacement for To Kill a Mockingbird!
Guess it was a waste to read the Odyssey or Pride & Prejudice, since I can't identify with anyone in the stories. If we only read things relevant to ourselves in today's context, we never will learn culture of the past. So be it....
Yes, samgamgee. what you note seems to be sadly true...I don't get it, but self validation is an important factor to people!
The problem is not the book the problem is the movie version which is inexcusably simplified. The way the story is told in the film Boo Radley or Dill, key characters both, hardly get a mention. The whole book is far more complex than the popular summary would suggest. It is not just a good novel it is a great novel; not Shakespeare exactly but great. If you have read Lee's other book you can see the conflicts (father-daughter) more on the surface. But those conflicts are there in TKM, only not quite so blatantly on the surface. Which is what makes it a work of art rather than just a private confessional like that second book.
Atticus on the other is a problematic figure in the book: He partakes in the general racism. He just doesn't want to hang an innocent man for murder. But he calls his client "Tom" and the client calls him Mr. Finch. The same goes for Calpurnia. If you read the book carefully and pay attention what is actually in it you can't support the idea that it should not be read in class. You can argue for other books instead but you can't blame the book for its contents if you actually pay attention while reading and not just dream about Gregory Peck.
If anything I think the movie version should be banned from classrooms for its gross simplifications. Great novels almost always are bad movies.
One more thing: I don't think novels should be "about me" (in any sense of "me"). They are about other people and empathy.
The idea that old books are irrelevant for young people is of course nonsense. Good old books are good old books because their relevance survives changing times and habits.
"Good old books are good old books because their relevance survives changing times and habits."
Good old books are also good old books simply because they're good books. There's nothing necessarily wrong with relevance, it simply shouldn't be the only consideration.
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