How Does Atticus Explain Rape To Scout

This week, legions of book lovers volition become their take chances to read something most thought would never be: the sequel to Harper Lee's 1960 classic novel "To Kill a Mockingbird." The newly-minted "Get Gear up a Watchman" follows the beloved Finch family several decades afterwards "Mockingbird."

Perhaps, similar me, y'all first read "To Impale a Mockingbird" for school. In Mrs. Leach'due south eighth grade English class, I showtime croaky open up the classic and plant a book that will remain forever on my favorites list. But in multiple re-readings over the years, I've noticed that two of the principal characters don't recollect much of the identify where I and millions of other students outset met them. There's Picket, the young spitfire tomboy, and Atticus Finch, the heroic lawyer who defends a blackness man defendant of raping a white woman.

In their own ways, the two resist racial prejudices built into their community and the justice system in 1930s Alabama. But they as well don't hide their distaste for problems they see in Maycomb schools and public education generally.

Sentry's Unsatisfying School Experience

Earlier crossing the schoolhouse threshold, Scout already views its contents with skepticism. This isn't surprising, given that she's a kid faced with new experiences. But her suspicions soon develop into an all-likewise-understandable derision. Miss Caroline, her kickoff-form teacher, displays a naiveté of her students further hampered by—wait for it—her teacher grooming.

Miss Caroline, her first-grade teacher, displays a naiveté of her students further hampered by—wait for information technology—her teacher preparation.

She most faints at the concrete dirtiness of i student, then cowers when he confronts her. She embarrasses a hungry pupil and requires a lesson in local social hierarchy from some other. On tiptop of all that, she mystifies the class with a mind-numbingly silly story, then tells Lookout she needs to cease reading and writing at home so she can learn "correctly" at school. And all of this happens on Spotter'due south first twenty-four hour period.

Unfortunately, things practice non improve. "The residual of my schooldays were no more auspicious than the first," Lookout man reflects. "Indeed, they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit, in which miles of construction newspaper and wax crayon were expended by the Land of Alabama in its well-pregnant but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics."

From Jem, her older blood brother, Scout learns that the philosophies and practical content of instruction she encounters—referred to by Jem as the Dewey Decimal System—were not always what students had to tummy. She tin can't compare her experience to anything else but the Dewey style, though, and to what she has witnessed immediate in adults she respects. And then Scout makes a startling observation: "I could simply look around me: Atticus and my uncle, who went to school at home, knew everything—at least, what one didn't know the other did."

'Twelve Years of Unrelieved Colorlessness'

Watch's lawyer father, who likewise serves in the state legislature, and her doctor uncle are apprehensive, highly learned men, and miles ahead of most of the locals in understanding the wider globe. With their case in forepart of her, Scout rightly points to reading widely as the primary source of noesis gathering.

Sentry rightly points to reading widely as the primary source of knowledge gathering.

And then she makes a claim she never revises: "[As] I inched sluggishly forth the treadmill of the Maycomb Canton schoolhouse system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was beingness cheated out of something. Out of what I knew non, notwithstanding I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the land had in mind for me."

This is a damning indictment of public education, to say the least—recollect, this comes from a dearest protagonist from a Pulitzer-Prize winner that is read widely in public teaching. Indeed, a recent report found it was the number one nigh-assigned public-school reading. Sadly, it appears to Scout that the only consequent lessons public school wants to teach are a course of peer-determined socialization and institutionalized boredom. The same can be said of some other land-run institution: prisons. And Scout certainly sees her public schooling as a sentence to be fulfilled.

Equal Worth Doesn't Mean Equal Ability

Another criticism comes from Atticus, Scout'due south venerable begetter, and information technology comes when he makes his closing argument defending Tom Robinson, the man accused of rape.

Atticus explains that equality is not some magic fairy, dumping equal parts wisdom and wealth on every human beingness.

Atticus appeals to the jurors' understanding of justice and of its moral universality by kickoff acknowledging how people tin can misunderstand it—in particular, educators and administrators at schools: "The most ridiculous example [of the idea that all men are created equal] I tin recollect of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious—considering all men are created equal, educators volition gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority."

Information technology's obvious, Atticus explains, that equality is not some magic fairy, dumping equal parts wisdom and wealth on every human being being. Despite this, all people deserve equality of justice in a courtroom. He nods to the failures that happen at that place, but emphasizes that they "are the smashing levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal."

Here, Atticus illuminates a well-intentioned only faulty logic in public instruction that attempts to equalize both intellectual abilities and feelings in students. Both kinds of attempts are impossible endeavors, of course. Left unchecked, they brood their ain kind of settled institutional prejudices, from mindless bureaucracy to thoughtless racism, which Lookout also observes firsthand in a teacher attending the trial. In "Mockingbird," Scout and Atticus stop up pedagogy that both the instruction and justice systems should aspire to a morality greater than their flaws. First, though, we accept to run into these flaws.

Greatness Doesn't Mean Perfection

From what I've heard and so far about "Watchman," Atticus himself falls prey to some of the very blindness he seeks to point out in "Mockingbird." Whether this invalidates his moral authority on any subject, including on public instruction, is some other conversation. Lookout remains a heroine, though, in part considering she wrestles with how to reconcile her father's flaws with his great courage.

At the very to the lowest degree, every bit "Watchman" gets analyzed and scrutinized in the coming days, weeks, and years, I hope the novel provides a renewed word of what peachy literature can teach usa, particularly well-nigh what and how we larn, especially from our failures, both personal and institutional.

Nosotros can all acknowledge some of public instruction's bully strengths and benefits. Personally—and to proper name but 1 small instance—I encountered some splendid literature there similar "Mockingbird" that has shaped my life. I am exceedingly thankful for that.

Meanwhile, the lessons that I learned from that literature, like the importance of valuing every man life regardless of skin color or circumstance, I hope will keep to influence my outlook and practical life. If I and others continue to lionize "Mockingbird" for its insights on racial parity—as we should—mayhap it'southward time for us to glean insights from the novel about educating children, too.

Emily Olson writes the "Thoughts in the Heartland" column for the Pipestone County Star. She lives with her married man and five children in Minnesota.