To Kill A Mockingbird
So, it's the fiftieth anniversary of 'To Kill A Mockingbird', and there are lots of essays on it all over the internet. Some of them are very clever, so I linked to them here.
Reconstructing Atticus Finch. Was he really that good a lawyer?
Malcolm Gladwell on Atticus Finch and Southern liberalism.
A defense of To Kill A Mockingbird
I must admit, my experience of 'To Kill A Mockingbird' comes from having to study it at GCSE. I suspect this both ruined the book for me (as studying a book at GCSE almost always does), and also was a bit of a waste of time as far as teaching my class any of the lessons Harper Lee wanted to teach the children who read the book. We were a vile collection of privileged white kids in rural Berkshire, who really had little interest in racism, and that which we did pick up mostly taught us that it was something that happened in the American Deep South, which seemed almost entirely alien. We also studied 'Roll Of Thunder, Hear My Cry', which had much the same effect. Neither White nor Black Southern society seemed anything like our own, the characters felt utterly 'other' and the whole thing became a long grind about strange foreign people doing awful things to other strange foreign people.
I also found Scout very tedious from the word 'go'. This didn't help.
I wish now we'd studied something else if the school wanted us to learn about racism, something which didn't let us opt out of the whole learning process quite so much. Even something about British history in that time period, like the 'Jewel in the Crown' series might have been a bit more useful. But my school determinedly decided to teach us about racism, focusing on racism in the American Deep South. These days, I suspect that might sum up everything that's wrong with the British attitude towards race and racism.
Reconstructing Atticus Finch. Was he really that good a lawyer?
Malcolm Gladwell on Atticus Finch and Southern liberalism.
A defense of To Kill A Mockingbird
I must admit, my experience of 'To Kill A Mockingbird' comes from having to study it at GCSE. I suspect this both ruined the book for me (as studying a book at GCSE almost always does), and also was a bit of a waste of time as far as teaching my class any of the lessons Harper Lee wanted to teach the children who read the book. We were a vile collection of privileged white kids in rural Berkshire, who really had little interest in racism, and that which we did pick up mostly taught us that it was something that happened in the American Deep South, which seemed almost entirely alien. We also studied 'Roll Of Thunder, Hear My Cry', which had much the same effect. Neither White nor Black Southern society seemed anything like our own, the characters felt utterly 'other' and the whole thing became a long grind about strange foreign people doing awful things to other strange foreign people.
I also found Scout very tedious from the word 'go'. This didn't help.
I wish now we'd studied something else if the school wanted us to learn about racism, something which didn't let us opt out of the whole learning process quite so much. Even something about British history in that time period, like the 'Jewel in the Crown' series might have been a bit more useful. But my school determinedly decided to teach us about racism, focusing on racism in the American Deep South. These days, I suspect that might sum up everything that's wrong with the British attitude towards race and racism.