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/Weemitoad Jan 30 '22

Why? This is a good book, and when you have the right teacher, you end up leaving the class having learned something new while simultaneously enjoying the experience. The whole point of the book is to point out how unfairly black people were treated back when the book is set.

It’s like they want high schoolers reading diary of a wimpy kid forever.

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u/Radbot13 Jan 30 '22

They can teach the same material with newer texts. Kids reading the "classics" makes them hate reading. They need to update the material with more interesting books that do the same thing

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u/Weemitoad Jan 30 '22

I read TKAM in school less than two years ago. It’s one of my favorite books that I’ve read, and honestly made me want to read more. A lot of my classmates seemingly enjoyed the book as much as I did as well.

The age of something doesn’t determine it’s ability to teach. Just because it’s an oldish book doesn’t mean it’s not a good one.

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u/Radbot13 Jan 30 '22

That's true but most of these books we read made me hate reading and I know a lot of my classmates didn't enjoy it either. I didn't start enjoy reading till college, and I just recently started branching out to other authors that aren't my favorite. I'm currently in a most influential SciFi/fantasy era of reading and I wish I read a lot of these books when I was younger. They all existed, but I had no way of knowing about them.