Harper Lee’s 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, which tells the story of a white lawyer’s protection of a Black man who was falsely accused of raping a white lady, is taken into account a basic of recent American literature.
It’s additionally among the many books most ceaselessly challenged and banned from center and highschool curricula.
Profanity; racially charged epithets, together with the n-word; and a rape scene prime the explanations critics need it out of school rooms. Others, like not too long ago retired instructor Ann Freemon, who taught highschool English for many of her 34 years as a instructor and To Kill a Mockingbird for simply as lengthy, staunchly defend instructing the e-book.
Freemon retired on the finish of the 2022-23 college 12 months from Mariner Excessive College in Washington state, a majority-minority highschool the place greater than half of scholars qualify without cost or reduced-price lunch. She by no means anticipated that Mukilteo, the progressive college district of about 15,000 college students on the Puget Sound simply north of Seattle the place she taught, would problem the e-book that she lengthy thought of one in all her favorites to show, and positively essentially the most impactful. She positively didn’t count on fellow highschool English academics to be those to problem it.
However two years in the past, academics from a neighboring highschool in her district did simply that, arguing that the novel is polarizing, facilities on whiteness, and fails to rejoice an “genuine Black perspective.” A number of the districts’ Black college students reported that the e-book misrepresented them, as African Individuals. In the end, the e-book wasn’t banned, however the district granted academics permission to not assign the novel that beforehand had been a part of the district’s literature curriculum for a number of years. In 2022-23, Freemon’s final 12 months as a highschool English instructor, she was, to her data, the one instructor in her district to assign the e-book.
Freemon’s identify surfaced in an in-depth Washington Submit article on the controversy printed in early November. In a more moderen interview with Schooling Week, she explains, in her personal phrases, why she feels strongly that To Kill a Mockingbird ought to stay part of the highschool English literature curriculum, particularly when taught in a trusting surroundings that begins with considerate preparation, omits studying of offensive language, and ends with open dialogue.
The dialogue has been edited for size and readability.
I learn To Kill a Mockingbird in class as a teen. After you undergo this many pages with characters, you develop one thing for them; you simply need to see them do nicely. I recall everybody in my class being overwhelmingly upset with the injustice of all of it. That prompted—similar to it did with my college students—conversations about that injustice.
It additionally impressed conversations about compassion and empathy—particularly, feeling compassion and never being afraid of those that are completely different than us, together with these with psychological disabilities or those that have a special pores and skin shade. These are all fears, and thru studying this e-book, we are able to have these conversations and possibly attempt to work on being higher human beings. That’s what we talked about once I was a scholar, and that’s what I attempted to do once I’ve taught To Kill a Mockingbird through the years.
Once I taught the e-book, I’d hit what college students are required to know, when it comes to literary gadgets and methods, all of which this e-book has in it. However I additionally lay the groundwork on making ready college students for what they’d discover. You must give them historical past on it first and begin engaged on it. Then they begin to belief you. This isn’t the e-book I start the 12 months with.
First, we might speak concerning the e-book cowl, what they see, what they anticipate, whether or not anybody has heard something concerning the e-book. We’d speak about their background data. And I might say to them: We’re going to be going to a reasonably darkish place.
The following day, when college students got here in—and that is earlier than we ever crack the e-book open—I might dangle photos across the room taken from the Jim Crow legislation period, with the writing lower out, so it’s simply the photographs. I’d dangle eight to 10 of them on the partitions. The children would go in teams of two to have a look at them. I gave them three minutes, with their companion, to absorb the small print, resolve what they thought was occurring within the photographs, what particulars let you know that. And I’d ask them to justify their causes.
Then they’d get a homework project on Jim Crow legal guidelines. They might come again to class very, very somber. Then we’d speak concerning the photos that they had checked out. A few of them are actually powerful. I might say to them, What do you suppose is occurring? That may generate dialog. And I might inform them: This image represents the segregation of the racially segregated water fountains, etcetera. We’d speak about that. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards granted a posthumous pardon to Homer Plessy [who was arrested for refusing to leave a train compartment designated for whites in 1892] whereas we have been studying about Plessy v. Ferguson. The scholars have been like, ‘No approach!’ It made it tremendous related.
A number of the academics within the district who challenged the e-book claimed they have been defending college students from trauma that may consequence from listening to the n-word, in addition to white saviorism. Once they heard I deliberate to proceed instructing the e-book after it was challenged, I feel my colleagues have been taking a look at me like, ‘Are you actually [going to keep teaching it]?’ And I used to be like, ‘Sure, I actually am.’ As a result of it’s nonetheless a selection.
Earlier than we might begin studying the e-book, I might set it up very rigorously, letting college students know that we have been going to be respectful of everyone within the room always and that we have been in search of the larger messages in it. I might inform my college students: There are going to be some very offensive strains in it. We’ll by no means say the n-word. After we see it, we’ll change it to “individual.” Not one scholar has ever learn the phrase out loud in my class. If I confirmed a video clip from the e-book, I screamed excessive when the phrase was used. I advised them upfront that’s what I’d be doing. Then no one needed to take that on and listen to it. I advised them that the phrase is offensive, even to me, and it’s not even directed to my translucent pores and skin.
The final time I taught the e-book, my college students have been in a position to make connections to George Floyd and different issues occurring within the information. Moreover, I advised them the e-book had been banned in some districts and challenged in ours. On the finish, I requested them: What did you suppose? They stated: That is powerful, however that is so precious. Each one in all them.
I might by no means ship a child dwelling with a e-book like this with out classroom conversations. As uncomfortable as these conversations are, they’re needed to maneuver us ahead, I feel. And I feel my college students thought so, too.
I disagree with critics who say this e-book is just not related to their college students; it’s [relevant]. A few of my favourite books weren’t written about somebody like me. In My Eyes Are Watching God, for example, the principle character occurs to be Black. It takes place in a really poor space in Florida. It wasn’t written for me, however it’s an attractive piece of literature. Not all the very best classes come from somebody who seems to be similar to us.
I feel we’d like to consider others’ views, similar to To Kill a Mockingbird illustrates for us. That’s the place we acquire compassion, tolerance. We acquire understanding. We see ourselves possibly somewhat bit nearer to one another than as far aside as I feel we’re beginning to get. I feel generally we don’t all the time give highschool college students sufficient credit score. I feel we have to push them out of their boundaries of consolation. We shouldn’t all the time be snug. It’s by way of these uncomfortable conditions that we ought to be studying.
