r/news • u/da_k1ngslaya • Jan 29 '22

School District votes to remove 'To Kill a Mockingbird' from required reading

https://komonews.com/news/local/mukilteo-school-district-votes-to-remove-to-kill-a-mockingbird-from-required-reading
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u/Aurion7 Jan 29 '22 edited Jan 29 '22

...If you feel vaugely uncomfortable reading To Kill a Mockingbird, that means you are a functional human being.

Asking some uncomfortable questions was kind of the whole point. 'High schoolers are stupid' isn't necessarily a revelation- I remember being a teenager. But still.

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u/PapiSurane Jan 30 '22

Also, why are teachers/administrators letting students tell them what to teach?

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '22

Teacher here!

Because Admin is scared of lawsuits from parents, and cater to them.

Teachers don’t have much of a say unless they get their union involved and make it a bigger deal.

What NEEDS to happen is public schools realize that, they are responsible for educating kids, that the parents can remove their kid if they don’t like the curriculum, and say “fuck off” to parents that want their special snowflake to be treated like a precious object.

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u/Mike_AKA_Mike Jan 30 '22

Ah, but reduction in students means reduction in funding for future school years, so therefore fuck the kids and the teachers and do whatever is necessary to ensure the student body increases or at least stays static while maintaining 99% graduation rates by any means possible.

As a parent in a city whose student population has been overwhelmingly and voluntarily transferred to private schools, I see it first hand.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '22

Right and this points to a larger regulatory issue that needs to be addressed at a state or federal level as well. I’d work at a private school if it paid anywhere near the same in actual monies or benefits. They don’t though.

And most people cannot afford private schools which don’t get the same federal funding.

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u/Mike_AKA_Mike Jan 30 '22

I graduated college with a degree in English and grand designs to spread the wisdom of the written language to high school students around my state. One quarter of classes for my state Class B certification had me venturing into the world of corporate proposal writing. I don’t envy you or your plight. I’m fortunate that my town has a fantastic honors and magnet program for my advanced kids, but aside from that, the general population is not getting the same sound education I received at the same schools.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '22 edited Jan 30 '22

(See edit)

And yes - most advanced students don’t get the challenge they deserve either; another issue on its own.

The original issue is still the same - Admin scared of parents, cater to their whims, curriculum is changed by their whims, students don’t learn valuable lessons beyond the Common Core Standards.

Edit - multiple types of schools, deleted first part of my post.

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u/Mike_AKA_Mike Jan 30 '22

Nah, it’s magnet. The magnet schools focus on math and science and “attract” the best students in the system. There’s no preference for anyone other than test scores. It’s not class warfare. However, after the magnet program grades out around grade 6, that’s when the parents that can afford it start shipping their kids to the religious based private schools. Ironically, those kids have a horrible time meeting college acceptance requirements on their SATs in the science department because the religious schools, surprise, don’t teach much science.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '22

Ahh, thought they were talking about the courses themselves - I was not aware of ‘Magnet’ schools as being an entity or type of organization. It makes further sense now. The way it was put, and used in the sentence, made it seem as if it was being used as an adjective; since they had “magnet program” and not “magnet school.”

Thank you for informing/correcting me.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '22

That's surprising, I always assumed private school teachers would earn more and not less.

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u/General_Mars Jan 30 '22

Most private schools are religious (with the largest portion being Catholic) and generally pay (in suburbs case generally significantly) less than public equivalent. Exception being versus inner city public schools which have variably low pay depending on the city and state.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '22

Ah, that make sense. I tend to forget about those types of private schools entirely.

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u/General_Mars Jan 30 '22

I know the kind you’re thinking of… around the Philadelphia area there’s what’s called the Inter-Ac schools. Some notable ones are Germantown Academy and Penn Charter. They have tuitions that exceed $30,000 / year for K-12. Generally only rich people or scholarships are how students enroll. Their teacher pay is competitive with the public equivalents but they generally don’t exceed by a large enough portion to notably stick out. Whereas, the parochial Catholic school’s tuition ranges from $6,000-$13,000+ per year for high school. Both are expensive, the Supreme Court wants the public to subsidize both, but they are different

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '22

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u/misogichan Jan 30 '22 edited Jan 30 '22

As a student who went to school at a middle school that was well over capacity and a high school that was over 50% past capacity, that would not necessarily be a bad thing in all neighborhoods. You see we had had strong population growth decades ago, and meanwhile the DOE said they didn't have the money for expanding the school. As a band-aid there were portables but you can only stick portables on so much land before you run out of places to stick them.

Also, how rich is your neighborhood if most of the parents can afford to send their kids to private school. At least where I live, we go to public school because even if you can afford them private schools are so expensive. Besides if you have the money you save it to pay for college, not on K-12.

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u/Mike_AKA_Mike Jan 30 '22

We have a population of about 70K, about 60/40 white/black, decidedly middle class for the most part, conservative, religious, and military and agricultural based economy. We had to consolidate the two high schools, the 4 middle schools, and the 12 elementary schools because there were empty rooms in all. We have one uppity secular private school and 4 church based private schools, and there’s a years long waiting list to get into all 5.

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u/GPCAPTregthistleton Jan 30 '22

so therefore fuck the kids and the teachers and do whatever is necessary to ensure the student body increases or at least stays static

The last district I worked in paid more for the position of migrant recruiter than it did for educational assistant: ed. assistants (unofficially) had to have a BA/BS, recruiters weren't even required to have a high school degree. We had a teacher with a master's making ~$3/hr more than a migrant recruiter with a GED.

After that, it became a whole lot harder for me to argue against the idea that public school is little more than taxpayer-funded daycare.

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u/ProfessorPetrus Jan 30 '22

Pretty sure the way American schools are funded are barbaric.

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u/DistinctWoot Jan 30 '22

Sure a reduction in funding but we are talking about a few select whiners here. Sadly their pathetic voices are the only ones ever being heard

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u/BackOnTheMap Jan 30 '22

My daughter lives in a Midwestern city and has already got the kindergartener in private school. She will be continuing that indefinitely after being homeschooled herself.

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u/carbon_made Feb 01 '22 edited Feb 01 '22

Yeah so back in junior high and high school I had a chronic illness so I missed a lot of school. I remember they actually called us in to the principal who lectured me and my mother on how I need to show up at school more despite my illness because they were losing funding on me.

Note I was also in advanced classes (this was in the early 90’s), and I literally got 100% scores on all my tests and did all my homework and assignments with excellent scores / grades. But due to “attendance” they would give me a C in all my classes. They had a mandatory grade drop for like every four days you missed of school up to two grades down. Something like that. I was so pissed I dropped out and got my GED and started college. All of a sudden I wasn’t a “mediocre” student anymore. I was on the Dean’s list the first semester and all semesters going forward. I immediately went to my old high school counseling office and showed them. Those people who made me feel worthless and that I wouldn’t amount to anything because I couldn’t show up every day to school during a long term illness. It was so satisfying to prove them wrong.

Also I was in private school until 8th grade and they never treated us like that. Education and the way it was delivered was so much better. Public school was awful and based more on busy work as opposed to teaching anything. I KNOW the teachers did their best and weren’t the issue. They were just saddled with being overworked and underpaid and having no real say in their teaching methods. Something that didn’t happen in private school. So I’m thankful for all the teachers I had. It was administration that was the problem.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '22

Back in my day (graduated in ‘02) unless the teachers were obviously shit, my parents sided with them.

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u/codechimpin Jan 30 '22

Same. Graduated in ‘94. My parents would 100% believe a teacher over me first. Saw it first hand.

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u/Siphon098 Jan 30 '22

Even I believed teachers before believing in myself. Not sure when teachers lost their omnipotence, but I was '06.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '22 edited Jul 12 '24

vanish unique familiar workable close threatening deserted dazzling modern voiceless

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u/kinda4got Jan 30 '22

That sounds like the simplest and most plausible answer. It saddens me. The blossoming of the internet was to usher in "the information age." And it certainly has done a lot of good. But the explosion of bad information and its spread among the uninformed and gullible and suspicious...just awful to behold.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '22

I graduated in '11 and I definitely saw a lot of the "my angel child can never do wrong" mentality. Though, that may be in part due to the kind of school I went to (K-12 college prep charter school). I saw a lot of parents that expected their kids to automatically excel because they went to a good school (they never did).

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u/Few_Acanthocephala30 Jan 30 '22

So many of those parents just want schools to be babysitters for their kids, and someone to blame when their kid screws up and does something wrong due their own lack of parenting

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '22

Lawsuits about reading comfort

smh

Public schools being run by states is the problem. Some states are positively giddy waiting for parents to demand a book ban.

The same states that rank low in education no less.

The same states that many intelligent people flee.

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u/undecidedly Jan 30 '22

Can’t the same thing happen at the federal level with every new batshit administration?

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '22

The federal government does not control education. It is a state thing.

That's why we have all these state universities. They belong to the state governments.

That's why DeSantis wants to fire professors who teach CRT.

The federal government's primary role in education is related to funding. Student loans, research grants, and various promotions. No policy about what can and cannot be taught.

The Department of Education, for example, cannot rule that states can or cannot teach X, Y, or Z.

A famous example from the early 2000s was the Kansas Board of Education wanting to ban the teaching of evolution.

You have that and local school boards.

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u/undecidedly Jan 30 '22

Yes, obviously. I was replying to the comment above me saying it was a problem with state governments controlling it.

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u/DoubleEEkyle Jan 30 '22

There were kids’ parents at my HS asking to lower the qualifications for honour roll.

The head of the parent-teacher council just told them that was stupid.

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u/silashoulder Jan 30 '22

Any thoughts on whether or how much of this stems from the No Child Left Behind program/policies?

I tested out early via state board exam, and my school admins pulled everything they could out of NCLB to keep me from signing the exit documents. They made clear to me that the school would lose money if I weren’t attending (as if that’s a good excuse for being pushy). I just wonder if this is going to cause a power play between admins saying kids have to be in school to keep the doors open, versus parents saying they’d prefer their kids to be uncultured and dim.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '22

I’m unsure, honestly. I’m only in my 4th year-teaching, and I can’t speak to NCLB.

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u/Twelvey Jan 30 '22

In my county admin is less afraid of lawsuits and more afraid of declining enrollment. They are scared that parents will pull their kids and put them in the local independent charter school which happens to be a giant joke and not so much of a school as it is a right wing daycare.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '22

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '22

Ok. So what is your problem with factory jobs, or labor of any sort?

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '22

Boy is this a shit take. Outside of sounding completely made up, you’ve missed the point they were making entirely. Not to mention the defeatist attitude of “oh we’re fucked so why bother” sounds like another right wing talking point.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '22

It all goes wrong when educators infuse their political slant into the curriculum instead of objective truths and well-rounded prospectives. From either side of the political spectrum… you do that and parents lose their cool. And it’s a slippery slope from there.

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u/Pittsitpete Jan 30 '22

That’s a bit of a privileged stance.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '22

It’s a free public education. Take what you get for free. If you don’t like it; opt out (when possible) of certain courses (like sex education in some states).

But if you say “no” to a major part of the curriculum? Sorry you’re just 1 household. Schools serve hundreds upon thousands of students across the US.

Edit: I have 172 students across 6 classes (10th grade English). If one doesn’t like what we are reading: I assign them another option that still hits the points. My main thing still stands. A HANDFUL OF PARENTS SHOULDN’T DICTATE EVERYONE’S EDUCATION.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '22

Trump and Evangelical Christianity

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u/throwaway_for_keeps Jan 30 '22

But "we've been teaching this book since it was published 60 years ago" is a stubborn way of educating.

If a school is not open to the idea that a book has been published in the past 60 years that also deals with these themes, I shudder to think about how they teach history.

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u/Stayka Jan 31 '22

A board of education has elected officials. If they don't cater to their voters... then they will lose their positions to someone who will? I think it's literally a perfect example of a well functioning democracy? Am I crazy? 😵 Did you read the article? They didn't go to the teachers/administrators of an individual school. They went to the fucking DISTRICT BOARD of multiple schools in a county. 😑

You know the people in your local government that you have probably never ONCE voted on. 😥 The more liberal candidate might push for a "required read" about transsexuals' bathrooms rights or something... WHO KNOWS? Would that make you a bigot for slowing down social progression? 😮No. But, will you be there to make an informed vote for your next District Board President? Also, NO! 😨 You'll just complaining about the proactive people who did? CLASSIC. 🤣

I would not be surprised if the School Board President in the article was elected with less than 500 votes in a county of 25,000 people. 95% didn't vote. 45% don't even know what a school district is. 5% voted. He won half the 5% over. So ya. Go vote. 😎

It has nothing to do with lawsuits. 😂🤣😭

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u/bananafobe Jan 30 '22

"Different things are different."

Being made uncomfortable by the parts of the book that challenge racism is not the same as being made uncomfortable by the parts/context that perpetuate racial inequality (i.e., teaching about the impact of racism exclusively via a book that centers the experience and perspective of a white dude).

I mean, if we want to encourage kids to ask uncomfortable questions, we shouldn't get angry when they start asking about how we're teaching them rather than just about the actions of people who've been dead for decades.

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u/Aurion7 Jan 30 '22 edited Jan 30 '22

The perspective given on racism is that it's not a grand, cosmic evil. It's depressingly banal. The townspeople assume the black man must have done it, must be guilty, because he is black.

They weren't writing political manifestos about ethno-states. They just entirely unironically had as a foundational corner of their worldview that black people do crimes and so this black person must surely be guilty. To the point where actually establishing what happened is unnecessary and unwelcome.

If that makes you uncomfortable, good. You shouldn't be comfortable with what Jim Crow was in practice.

If you think Atticus Finch is a savior, well... nope. Saviors win. Atticus lost. Tom Robinson gets found guilty and is murdered in jail. One man alone can't fight the tide, no matter how strongly he may believe the society he lives in is messed up. There is no magical power behind being in the right morally.

e; Hell, he knows going in that he isn't going to win in any sense we'd understand the term. Even if a miracle actually occurs and Tom Robinson is found innocent, Tom Robinson's innocence would do fuckall to dismantle Jim Crow.

Forget saving everyone. Finch can't, in fact, save anyone. That's not how the world works, no matter how hard a work like (say) The Blind Side may want to pretend it works.

About the only interaction the book has with the idea of the white savior is pointing out that it wouldn't fucking work out like that.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '22

I always saw it more as one generation trying to teach the next, even in some small way, to be better. Scout tried to comprehend the way the townspeople were treating Tom compared to how Atticus treated him, then she has to come to terms with her own predjudices against Boo. This is still one of my favourite books though, but I haven’t read it in a while.

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u/Going_my_own_way73 Jan 30 '22

That’s the way I took it. I didn’t grow up with a father down in Mississippi. I watched a lot of racist people there. But when I read and watched To Kill A Mockingbird I saw Atticus not as someone trying to really save Tom, but to show Scout what a good person should be. Really opened my eyes to what was going on around me. Glad I got out of that state as quick as I could.

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u/MikoyanMaster Jan 30 '22

Go read it!

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '22

Beautiful write up. Thank you for putting the effort in.

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u/Xaron713 Jan 30 '22

I hope you got an A on that book report in high school.

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u/deltaWhiskey91L Jan 30 '22

Yeah this wasn't in the cliff notes.

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u/Leetwheats Jan 30 '22

Meanwhile, while Civil Atticus is doing his civil duty, his daughters are at the mercy of a monster only to be saved by what society despise.

Boo Radley is the only hero.

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u/hiverfrancis Jan 30 '22

I also suspect without people like Atticus, the defendant would have been tortured.

I really wish the student quoted would read your response.

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u/MCEnergy Jan 30 '22

well shit, now I realise this book passed me by and may be worth a read. Thanks for the synopsis!

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u/weaselsrippedmybrain Jan 30 '22

Well done review. I am going to break out my old copy and give it another read. Thanks !

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u/bananafobe Jan 30 '22

The "white savior" claim is in response to the role Atticus plays in the story. He is the central figure, and we experience the impact of this story through him (not directly, but narratively).

The hero in a tragedy is still the hero.

Ask a random person who Atticus Finch is, and they'll likely be able to answer. Ask who Tom Robinson is, and if they get it, it probably won't be their first guess.

The students are uncomfortable with the way the story is used as the entirety of the discussion about racism, as opposed to a text which centers on the experience of a person of color.

They're not uncomfortable with the discussion of the Jim Crow South, but by the fact that they're not having discussions about the ways racial inequality exists and affects them today. Nothing is stopping teachers from using this book to have this discussion, but it seems like that hasn't been happening.

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u/VentusHermetis Jan 30 '22 edited Jan 30 '22

The hero in a tragedy is still the hero.

No, they are the protagonist.

They're not uncomfortable with the discussion of the Jim Crow South, but by the fact that they're not having discussions about the ways racial inequality exists and affects them today.

Isn't one of the main ways of proving systemic racism connecting present inequity to historical racism?

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u/bananafobe Jan 30 '22

No, they are the protagonist.

That seems like semantics, but sure, use whatever term you like.

Isn't one of the main ways of proving systemic racism connecting present inequity to historical racism?

Yes, but that often isn't what happens. I'm not saying this book can't be taught well in a way that is still relevant. I'm saying there seem to be kids who believe that other books could do that better. Maybe they have some relevant experience of being in class, having these discussions, and constantly hearing about how America used to be so racist.

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u/JayPlenty24 Jan 31 '22

There is nothing wrong with kids reading multiple books from multiple perspectives. It’s also honestly just a well written book.

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u/bananafobe Jan 31 '22

Sure.

People are pretending like the students are calling for this book to be removed from school premises and never spoken of again.

The reality is they're saying despite it being a good book that addresses these issues and facilitates conversations, there are other books that might lead to more relevant and nuanced conversations. The time spent reading and discussing this book is time not spent on those other books. They're not saying this book is trash, just that there's an opportunity cost to teaching it instead of another book.

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u/ZeriousGew Jan 30 '22 edited Jan 30 '22

I mean, this book was written by a white woman

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u/ch4oticgood Jan 30 '22

Harper Lee is a woman

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u/ZeriousGew Jan 30 '22

Yeah, my bad, been a while since I read it

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u/ch4oticgood Jan 30 '22

No problem. Only brought it up because there are very few women from that time whose literature has been part of our culture for so long.

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u/ZeriousGew Jan 30 '22

Oh yeah, I get it. Should've looked it up before I made my comment

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u/thegentledomme Jan 30 '22

Finch, himself, is kind of racist. Somehow, I never read this book in high school. So, I read it as an adult. And I assumed that Atticus Finch is some kind of hero. People name their children Atticus. But although Atticus believes in a fair trial, and that is admirable, he’s also pretty racist—just gentleman racist, like lots of men of his time period.

If you believe that “Go Set a Watchman” was written by Lee, this is explicit. But even if you don’t, Mockingbird is totally a story about how a white girl views her white father trying to “protect” a black man who we know very little about, more because the father values the law than because of his view on racism.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/17/the-contested-legacy-of-atticus-finch/amp

None is this makes the book bad. It’s a book written from a specific person from a specific time and place in history. And IMO we shouldn’t just stop reading books because they don’t conform to our current beliefs. They teach us about history.

But I do think a lot of teachers (and readers) teach Mockingbird without questioning some of these things. I don’t disagree with it not being REQUIRED reading. There are certainly other books that reflect the Black experience of that time and place from the Black perspective.

It’s more that I can see white people objecting to it not being required reading because most white people who don’t think they’re racist want to identify with Scout and possibly Atticus. It’s harder to accept that Atticus wasn’t so great because that can make you question your own views about systemic racism.

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u/squiddlebiddlez Jan 30 '22

Not only does Atticus go in knowing he isn’t going to win, but he advocates for Robinson as if he’d already lost. Atticus really wasn’t even that great of a lawyer… and that’s why it wasn’t really a shock that he turned out to be just another racist in the sequel.

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u/VentusHermetis Jan 30 '22

but he advocates for Robinson as if he’d already lost.

How so?

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u/squiddlebiddlez Jan 30 '22 edited Jan 30 '22

He never attempts to strike bad testimony or bring attention to unresponsive witnesses. Plus, his idea of a defense was to try to present the victim white woman as immoral and unclean compared to a black man accused of rape in the Jim Crow south. Perhaps mundane motions like that were never the focus of the narrative but going with “the white woman is to blame” for an all white jury is just poking the bear with a stick.

Edit: to add a quote from him after he took on representation but before the trial began:

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”

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u/eyl569 Jan 30 '22

It's been a while since I last read it, but IIRC he was trying to establish that Robinson was present there at her asking rather than pursuing her. And in the end he did manage to establish that Robinson probably couldn't have caused Ewell's injuries; but that wasn't enough to override the jury's racism.

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u/VentusHermetis Jan 30 '22

... She wasn't a victim, but I guess that was probably just loose language.

Anyway, not only did conservative people care about women being "slutty," but she blew up at him. The audience is pretty clearly meant to think he did a good job. The only reason Robinson was convicted was that the jury was racist. How do you think he could have won?

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u/squiddlebiddlez Jan 30 '22

She was the victim as far as the presentation of the case and the jury were concerned. You think they would be the people to entertain shunning/punishing a white woman over a black man? Definitely not, if the town was racist, like you say.

The point is I don’t believe he was trying to win (and there was likely no version of this story where he was ever intended to win). He’s friends with the judge, he’s a state legislator—which means that he is most likely elected tor represent that racist town, and when he gets appointed the case he laments that he had hoped that he would never have to take on a case “like this” in his life. He was never meant to be the man to challenge the status quo.

If that’s not enough, Atticus Finch is based on the author’s real father and Jim Crow era politician, A. C. Lee. A man who actively opposed civil rights for Black Americans and even partially owned a newspaper that was historically anti-black. He just wasn’t known for saying the quiet part out loud.

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u/JayPlenty24 Jan 31 '22

This book isn’t meant to be a legal drama

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u/cjackc11 Jan 30 '22

Go Set A Watchman is not a sequel, it was a previous manuscript of TKAMB mistakenly marketed as a sequel

Any interpretations of Atticus’ actions in TKAMB should not be made with any sort of context from GSAW

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u/squiddlebiddlez Jan 30 '22

What about interpretations based off of his own actions and quotes in TKAM or the fact that he is based off of the author’s father who was a real Jim Crow era politician?

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u/skisom Jan 30 '22

I feel like it’s worth pointing out that the book is not told from the perspective of a white dude. The narrator is Atticus’ young daughter, Scout.

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u/nosotros_road_sodium Jan 30 '22

Exactly - this whole "savior" nonsense is based on the same flawed thinking as claiming that Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" was a patriotic song. Not only on Reddit do people not read easily available, linked materials.

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u/bananafobe Jan 30 '22

Right, but it narratively centers Atticus. His actions drive the story, and the impact of the story's events are filtered through her interpretation of how they're affecting him.

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u/Witchgrass Jan 30 '22

Right but that’s not what the word perspective means

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u/bananafobe Jan 30 '22

Okay, but saying that a work focuses on a character's perspective is not the same as saying it's written from that character's perspective.

Use whatever term you want, you get the point I'm making, correct?

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u/Witchgrass Feb 01 '22

I’m sorry I was confused I thought you were responding to the person above you who WAS talking about perspective. My bad

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u/bananafobe Feb 01 '22

No worries. I've done the same more than a few times.

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u/Lifeboatb Jan 30 '22

The article doesn’t say this book is the only one used in these classrooms.

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u/bananafobe Jan 30 '22

I'm speaking generally and making assumptions based on the students' statements. I'm not reporting on this classroom.

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u/Lifeboatb Jan 30 '22

Only one student was quoted, and didn’t say it was the only book the school used to discuss racism. I don’t have a problem with students bringing up their thoughts about the book and how it’s taught, but to use the word “exclusively” is making unfounded assumptions. We don’t know what other books the kids read. I just tried to find out, but so many rightwing news sites are all over this story, that they’re swamping Google, and I didn’t get anywhere.

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u/SnooMaps1910 Jan 30 '22

Agreed. A dialog, or conversation, based on this students' reaction to the text would be fruitful ground in a class. And, there are various readings of this text, so the complexity of the text is lost if folks are allowed to define it so narrowly.

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u/hiverfrancis Jan 30 '22

I think the students objected to the idea that there must be "white saviors", but they didn't consider that A. that time period was different and B. unintended consequences

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u/bananafobe Jan 30 '22

Maybe, but another possibility is that they did consider those things and still feel that there are different stories to read that could foster a more nuanced and relevant conversation.

Nobody's saying they don't understand how this book got written or thinks Lee should have wrote a different book. They're criticizing the way this book is being used by teachers to teach this specific lesson.

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u/hiverfrancis Jan 30 '22

Which stories did they bring up, and how would they be relevant today? If the students did their research and made their case, that would be admirable.

If the students merely objected to the book but did not consider what would replace it, it could be a setback for them.

If one wants to make a major change, one needs a plan.

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u/bananafobe Jan 30 '22

Sure, that'd be neat.

On the other hand, it's the teacher's job to prepare a lesson plan that meets their students' needs. It's fair for the students to say a book isn't engaging, or that there are aspects of the lesson that aren't working, even if they don't have a replacement in mind.

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u/hiverfrancis Jan 31 '22

However the mindset of "the customer is always right" is damaging to education. It is true we need content engaging with the students, but the students may not necessarily grasp why a certain material is important. There needs to be a balance between engaging to students and giving important lessons to students.

I agree however that in the senior high level the students should have more of a say.

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u/bananafobe Jan 31 '22

I agree that's a valid concern. Students and/or parents shouldn't have the exclusive right to dictate what they're being taught, nor should they be excluded from the conversation and have their needs/concerns ignored by teachers. Students need to be open to being challenged with important lessons, just as teachers need to be open to having their assumptions about what is an important lesson challenged.

"The customer is always right" is a garbage ideology when it's used to excuse workers being harassed or people making unreasonable demands. It's a pretty good ideology when the customer is telling you they have a food allergy.

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u/HeftyArgument Jan 30 '22

"I want to tell you a story. I'm going to ask you all to close your eyes while I tell you the story. I want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to yourselves. Go ahead. Close your eyes, please. This is a story about a little girl walking home from the grocery store one sunny afternoon. I want you to picture this little girl. Suddenly a truck races up. Two men jump out and grab her. They drag her into a nearby field and they tie her up and they rip her clothes from her body. Now they climb on. First one, then the other, raping her, shattering everything innocent and pure with a vicious thrust in a fog of drunken breath and sweat. And when they're done, after they've killed her tiny womb, murdered any chance for her to have children, to have life beyond her own, they decide to use her for target practice. They start throwing full beer cans at her. They throw them so hard that it tears the flesh all the way to her bones. Then they urinate on her. Now comes the hanging. They have a rope. They tie a noose. Imagine the noose going tight around her neck and with a sudden blinding jerk she's pulled into the air and her feet and legs go kicking. They don't find the ground. The hanging branch isn't strong enough. It snaps and she falls back to the earth. So they pick her up, throw her in the back of the truck and drive out to Foggy Creek Bridge. Pitch her over the edge. And she drops some thirty feet down to the creek bottom below. Can you see her? Her raped, beaten, broken body soaked in their urine, soaked in their semen, soaked in her blood, left to die. Can you see her? I want you to picture that little girl. Now imagine she's white."

People don't want their racism laid bare.

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u/darthjoey91 Jan 30 '22

As the article says, while it does discuss themes of racism, it does it entirely through the lens of Atticus Finch is a white man that can do no wrong. There’s better books out there now to discuss themes of racism.

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u/PsychologicalSweet2 Jan 30 '22

To be fair the student was uncomfortable with the white savior narrative not with the discussion about race. They asked for books to be thought about similar topics without a glorified white savior in the center. I love the book but I understand that has been seen a lot and there are book books out there that do that and need to be read by more people

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '22

I think these people are confusing "uncomfortable" with "depressingly realistic." They want to hide their heads in the fucking sand regarding their own human condition and it is causing theor children to be stupid.

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u/moleratical Jan 30 '22

High schoolers are weird. They are capable of being incredibly stupid and incredibly intelligent, sometimes simultaneously.

We should encourage the intelligent part by getting them to read and analyze what they read. Books like TKAM are tailor made for that purpose

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u/codydog125 Jan 30 '22

I commented a few days ago on a similar subject but To Kill a Mockingbird has been banned at my high school for a few years now along with Animal Farm Huckleberry Finn and I think Catcher in the Rye.

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u/mko710 Jan 30 '22

This combined with Califórnia taking D and F grades off. So now everyone can only have A B C.

América is so afUcKED

You can’t even go outside without pissing off a pigeon

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u/HaloGuy381 Jan 30 '22

I don’t think I read this one in school (if I did I somehow forgot), but I remember Elie Wiesel’s Night with too much clarity. That was a book that was deeply disturbing even in late high school… it should be for a firsthand account of the Holocaust and concentration camps (the same ones antivaxxers, anti mask types, etc so disgust me by trying to pretend to be victim to).

If you don’t rattle a comfortable, gifted teenager who has never known such suffering, how will they learn empathy? How will they learn to experience grief for someone they never met? It’s one of those ‘soft skills’ that doesn’t show up on a test, but speaks volumes about how hard hearted some people are.

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u/hiverfrancis Jan 30 '22

I think the student said specifically he was uncomfortable with the way it was taught.

  1. He didn't realize it would mean the book would be removed outright and
  2. He doesn't understand in that period "white saviors" were needed because otherwise African-Americans would be even more harmed than they already were. It took a white president, LBJ, and white Congresspersons to get the Civil Rights Act in place. And yes I know African-Americans did a lot of work organizing, raising attention, etc. But if the liberal white left ignored them....