Should To Kill A Mockingbird Be Banned In Schools

Has anyone ever heard of a banned book? This book by Harper Lee, To Kill a

Many schools are taking books out of their curriculum because of the harsh and uncomfortable language and topics. The Biloxi School District had taken To Kill A Mockingbird out of their classrooms and Drake High School had even burned all copies of Slaughterhouse -Five. It is wrong that schools began taking books like that from their lesson plan because students should not be oblivious to these kinds of topics and it is sending the wrong message about the authors and their books.

Imagine a world where evil and unjust actions are based on the color of skin; a world where some don’t even realize that they are prejudicing. In the book To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, these themes are present. People and how they commit evil, hypocritical, and unjust acts. We see these themes and great issues through the point of view of a child; the vigorous, youthful, elementary-aged Scout. Through this character Harper Lee shows the innocence of children, and what they go through in our inequitable world.

The book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee should be read and taught in school considering the facts that it teaches the important message of learning to stand in other’s shoes, and that the reader can see the wide range of diversity such as socioeconomic status and race. In the real world, we will come across many different people with different backgrounds and views. It is easy to look at those people and think, “they are strange,” or “they don’t understand anything.” I admit, before reading this book I was insensitive to this and didn’t even realize when I looked at people and made those assumptions. This book has helped me be not so judgmental and be able to see from other people’s point of view. While some may say this book shouldn’t be taught because it is “racist” or

It has been over fifty years since Harper Lee wrote her classic book, To Kill a Mockingbird (TKM). “Harper Lee’s work is so powerful and popular that it has never been out of print,” (Price). Since then, the outside world has changed with significance. People wear jeans instead of slacks, pocket calculators have more computing power than the rocket that put humans on the moon, and culture is advancing faster than the rocket’s return. Through all these changes that have taken place since 1960, TKM remains ever present in the today’s competitive world and it “represents the best and the worst parts of American society” (TKM: Still Relevant). The symbolism and underlying messages of the book, specifically the illustration of the mockingbird in society, is extremely relevant in today’s world.

In our society, children have gone from watching dragons being beheaded in Sleeping Beauty, to watching mermaids gathering ingredients for cookies in the popular show Bubble Guppies. Children now are being sheltered from the real world. This is why many people now do not agree that To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee should be taught in school, due to it’s explicit content. This moving story tells a tomboyish young girl named Scout growing up in the 1930’s. This novel needs to still be taught in schools as a valuable life lesson.

James P. Krehbiel once said “Inevitably, if we are to grow and change as adults, we must gradually learn to confront the challenges, paradoxes, problems and painful reality of an insecure world.” In Harper Lee’s book, To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper lee sends many messages to the reader. Set in a fictitious town in Alabama in the 1930’s, one obvious theme is racism. However, while racism was the most obvious theme, it wasn’t the only one; other themes included innocence, understanding and growing up. Harper Lee also suggests how a person should react to problems around them. She shows us this through her character Jean Louise Finch, otherwise known as Scout, one of the main characters and narrator. Scout faces many problems growing up because of her father’s occupation as a lawyer and his doing his best to defend a black man in court. Scout shows us her questioning when she talks about Hitler, when she reads Mr. Underwood's article about the trail, and she show us her growth in the final pages of the book when she isn’t scared by the grey ghost. Harper Lee believes that we should face our problems by questioning them and acknowledging their existence; and that if a person questions and learns from the problems around them they will gain maturity and knowledge not teachable in schools.

require students to direct their learning into the pages of “To Kill A Mockingbird”. A timeless novel written by Harper Lee, allows the narrator who goes by the name of “Scout Finch” to reflect on her time as a young white female in the deep south during the early 1900s. Throughout the novel, the adolescent narrator and her slightly learn valuable life-lessons, taught by her father and the deceitfulness of their small towns society, along with the cruelty of white supremacy.

To Kill A Mockingbird is a universally beloved book that perfectly encapsulates being a child and growing up in the south. Though the times have changed, many of the experiences that Scout and Jem have are shared by children today, from an overactive imagination to playing with the neighborhood kids during the summer to a universal dislike of school shared by most young children. Not everything in TKAM is pretty; though Maycomb might seem like a sweet innocent town from the outside, on the inside however, anger, hatred, and racism run rampant. The town where everyone goes to church sunday is the same town that formed a lynch mob and would have killed Tom Robinson had it not been for Atticus and Scout. Race relations and social justice take

There has been much controversy over whether or not the novel To Kill a Mockingbird should be banned or not. This novel teaches students about the racism and prejudice of the 1930’s resulting in why the world is the way it is, as well as many important life lessons, therefore it should be continued to be taught in schools. The novel To Kill a Mockingbird should not be banned because it teaches about life in the past and why the world is the way it is now, proving that this novel has the ability to effectively educate kids about the past and potential impact of human behaviour.

Throughout Harper Lee’s novel, Scout Finch learns to grow up with compassion and empathy for characters. Atticus teaches Scout how to look at things in a different person's perspective and how a certain situation might affect them. Atticus reflects,

Parents, guardians and community members globally, enforce strict rules, which prevent the youth from gaining access to explicit material in hopes that their minds will not be affected by the harsh and real themes, which litter modern day arts. To kill a mockingbird has been in the firing line of censorship, since it made itself on the shelves of bookstores globally back in the 60’s. Since, schools internationally have researched the novel to learn techniques that will aid in the development of their thoughts, beliefs and skills. But now I’m standing in front of you, in hopes to solidify your beliefs to include this classic in the grade 12 curriculums, not just for educational purposes but to aid in the development of the future generations thoughts

In the novel, to kill a mockingbird, Harper Lee presents three very distinct types of innocence that are portrayed by different characters throughout the novel. A good part in this story’s brilliance is that Harper Lee has managed to use the innocence of a young girl to her advantage. She does this by telling the whole story from a child’s point-of-view. By having an innocent little girl make racial remarks and regard people of color in a way consistent with the community, Lee provides the reader with an objective view of the situation. As a child, Scout can make observations that an adult would often avoid. In addition, readers are also likely to be forgiving of a child’s perception, whereas they would find an adult who makes these

Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, To Kill a Mockingbird details the life and experiences of two children in a small town of Alabama. It describes how a series of events shakes their innocence, shaping their character and teaching them about human nature. In her novel, Lee demonstrates how these children learn about the essentiality of good and evil and the existence of injustice and racism in the Deep South during the 1930s. She describes the conscience and the loss of innocence that the two children experience and also details their individual development to maturity. Jem Finch, one of the children in the story, realizes the unfairness that exists around him and

In todays educational system many think that explicit content should not be taught due to its sensitive and controversial content. In Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”, set in Maycomb County, Alabama within the 1930s, an innocent girl, along with her family and friends, comes to the realization that her community is not as they once thought, robbing her and others of their innocence through racism and discrimination. The now adult protagonist, Jean Louise Finch or better known as Scout Finch, narrates the story of her childhood within the times of racial prejudice with her family, neighbours and friends. Scout and her four-year older brother, Jeremy Finch, or Jem, live in a house with her Father, Atticus Finch, who is a single parent as well as a lawyer, and an African American nanny who comes by to help, named Calpurnia. Scout and Jem become friends with a boy named Dill Harris in the summertime. Dill takes an interest on the Radley place, a creepy house, saying that a phantom named Boo Radley lives there along with the owner Nathan Radley. The following fall Scout goes to school for the first time and she hates it. The children find gifts in a knothole on a tree situated within the Radley property. Dill returns the next summer and the kids make a game of the Radley’s to try and lure Boo Radley out of his house, and Atticus tells them to stop and imagine the perspective of the Radleys. The next winter Jem and Scout find more presents in the tree, but eventually Nathan