To Kill To Kill A Mockingbird

or...why do we bother teaching literature, anyway?

A Washington Post article about teaching English? In Washington State? Featuring a book I’ve taught a few times?

Sure, I’ll chip in. Thanks for asking!

Photo by Anish Lakkapragada on Unsplash

(First, full disclosure: I have friends—at least one of whom is likely reading these words—from one of the schools discussed in the article. That sharpened my interest in this article, but it didn’t really impact my views.)

Read the whole thing, but here is my too-quick summary:

Teachers at the two high schools in the Mukilteo School District are disagreeing about whether to continue to teach Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird to freshmen. A group of English teachers at one of the schools went through the process to get the book removed from the courses (it would remain in the library, so calling this a “book ban” feels sloppy to me). They see the book as problematic for its White Savior themes, its flat portrayals of Black characters, and the fact that Black history is so often exposed to kids through the eyes of White authors. They point to their students of color who have had negative experiences reading the book. A group of English teachers at the other school love the book and want to keep teaching it. They find that the book is empowering and rich, and has been an excellent way to expose students to important themes from US History. They point to their students, including students of color, who have loved, enjoyed, and profited from the group.

Who’s right? And what would this veteran-English-teacher-turned-instructional-coach do?

Well, I’m gonna wrestle a bit, but I think I empathize deeply with literally every teacher discussed in the article, both those who fight to keep teaching TKAM and those who advocated for removing it from the curriculum. Still, when I add up the pluses and the minuses, I think I have come to the conclusion that, although I have taught and enjoyed this book in the past, it is time to thank TKAM for its years of service, honorably put it in the library where kids can find it if they want, and find other books to teach our students. 

As I have thought about this issue, I have found three compelling arguments to keep teaching To Kill a Mockingbird…and have decided those reasons are not enough to justify continuing to teach it. Let’s go through those reasons one at a time.

PRO #1 FOR TEACHING TKAM: Teachers and students often love the book, and teaching a book we love matters.

There’s no question that I am a better teacher when I am teaching a text that I feel passionately about. Kids pick up on that. I have a spring in my step and am excited to see how kids handle one of my favorite texts (The Things They Carried, “The Story of an Hour,” “my sweet old et cetera,” Raisin in the Sun…). I feel passionately that a teacher nerding out in front of kids is a secret sauce to teaching that we don’t talk about enough. Students want to see teachers love what they are teaching, even if the student isn’t a big fan. They might at least want to give it a shot to see what makes the teachers so jazzed up.

When I became an English teacher, one of the things that excited me the most was the opportunity to teach Hamlet. My high school English experience had been hit-and-miss for my freshman, sophomore, and junior years. I had one really good sophomore teacher, with whom I remember reading Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, and “The Unknown Citizen.” But it was AP Lit my senior year that really rocked my world and wound up exerting an outsize impact on what I did with the rest of my life (which is to say, spend it in classrooms). 

Out of all the great stuff that fantastic teacher had us read, Hamlet stood out. I thought I was Hamlet—appropriate for a 17-year-old dude who, like most 17-year-olds, thought his big emotions were unique and special and that nobody else in the world could possibly understand him. Watching The Prince of Denmark wrestle with meaning and betrayal and love and melancholy—it branded me. So when I eventually decided that I’d teach HS English, I was excited to teach Hamlet.

Part of my desire to do this was to pay it forward. I didn’t think that every kid would love Shakespeare or Hamlet, but I did think that there would be a couple of teenagers who would eat it up. I wanted to experience that moment again vicariously. I also thought that I would be able to package Hamlet in a way that students could relate to. Finally, I liked the eternity of it all. I was a part of a rich tradition—people had been grappling with Hamlet for 400 years before I read him, and will be continuing to grapple with it for another 400 or maybe 4,000 years after I am gone. I am a part of a tradition that includes all of those students and teachers and thoughts. Getting to dip in that river gives me a chill and a charge.

As it turned out, I only taught Hamlet once or twice. Over 21 years in the classroom, I taught at least 50 other novels and plays. I figured a key axiom of teaching high school literature:

I don’t teach books. I teach the ability to read, write, discuss, and think. As a result, the actual pieces I teach don’t matter as much as we think.

Once the job of an English teacher is reframed like that, I can—and did—get just as much joy out of teaching any work as I would out of Hamlet.

So when I think of the English teachers at Mariner High School in that story, who want to hold onto To Kill A Mockingbird because they and their students have found it rich and meaningful for so long, I empathize. But in the end, they don’t teach Harper Lee. They teach kids to read and write and think–and that, not the text they use, is what makes the job enjoyable. And it is that which, to me, mutes the impact of the first pro argument for keeping TKAM in the curriculum.

PRO #2 FOR TEACHING TKAM: IT’S A VERY GOOD BOOK.

The Post story talks about past students, both White and Black, who have fallen in love with Harper Lee’s book and are glad they read it. I would hope that is true for the couple of years’ worth of students who read it with me. I do remember one African American student who particularly loved it, which I admit put my mind a bit at ease because of the racist language and difficult racist themes of the book. 

But the book provides a lot of opportunities for analysis, especially with younger kids like freshmen. I taught the book the way I taught most novels. I primed the pump by talking to kids about big issues that the book would enable us to discuss. When I was in middle school and my parents showed me the movie, I thought it was a movie about race relations, how they poison us, and how to dodge that poison. I now think that TKAM is primarily a book about parenting, but that’s probably just because I read it for the first time as an adult—it was either right before or right after my eldest was born—and so Atticus’ challenges of how to raise two good human beings, and Aunt Alexandra’s disagreements with him on that issue, resonated with me.

I was right both times. The book is about so many things. It is also about growing up, about how to respond to injustice, about whether it makes sense to fight a difficult fight when you know you are going to lose, about what it means to be a boy, man, girl, and woman, about social stratification and money, about the dangers of the White Savior mentality, and about at least a few other big issues that I am likely forgetting right now.

That’s what makes To Kill a Mockingbird a good book—that we can get so much out of it. That—and people who have priceless memories with the book, like I did with Hamlet—is why teachers want to hold onto the book.

But, to paraphrase Henry Drummond in another book I’ve taught, To Kill a Mockingbird isn’t the only book.

There are too many other deep, rich books by people of color to justify continuing to roll out White voice after White voice.

I am embarrassed by what I am about to admit.

For years of my career, when I would teach American Literature, I knew that I needed to teach literature that addressed race relations over the history of this country. So, for the first three-quarters or so of my time in the classroom, I would make sure to have kids think about that injustice. Sometimes it was in the form of slavery, and other times in the form of segregation and the Civil Rights movement.

Some years I’d focus on slavery by reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Some years I’d focus on segregation by reading To Kill A Mockingbird.

Then, one year, far, far later than I care to admit, I noticed the huge problem in my choices. I was teaching Black history using exclusively White voices.

Yes, these are two fantastic novels. The moment Huck tears up his note brought about some incredible discussions about right and wrong, friendship and racism, self and society. Even the subsequent problematic chapters, when Huck goes right back to doing what Tom Sawyer says and essentially torturing Jim rather than simply declaring he had been freed as Tom knew, forces kids to think deeply about some of the ugliness embedded in our society, then and now.

But I was sending a message through my choices. That message was that only White voices and White characters matter. That we can talk about Black experience only through the eyes of White people (and, in these books, White children).

This has consequences. I remember in the literacy autobiography I had kids write at the start of the year in AP Lit, a brilliant Latinx kid named Maricel wrote “I am about to start my senior year, and I have still never read a book at school by a Latinx author.” What did that continued decision, and my role in it, say to Maricel? Given that we read “great books” in English class, it said that her teachers didn’t believe Latinx authors could create great books.

About a half second after I had that realization, I decided I couldn’t teach those books anymore. There are too many good books by authors of color to justify committing that continued sin. I subbed in Frederick Douglass for Twain and choose-your-own-author-of-color for Lee, and I think my kids—especially my kids of color—are better off for it.

In other words, when teacher Ann Freemon calls TKAM “good literature” and worries that kids will miss out on it, I feel for her. But kids were already missing out on other good literature because TKAM was entrenched in Freshman English. It’s time to get that in front of kids’ eyes.

Ultimately, it’s simply about getting any rich text in front of the kids. It’s clear to me that the value of rich texts by diverse voices outweighs the use of any single specific rich text.

PRO #3 FOR TEACHING TKAM: IT’S GOOD TO HAVE SHARED CULTURAL TOUCHSTONES

There’s one other good argument for reading canonical texts like TKAM. There is something to be said for knowing that everyone around us has read some of the same texts. Shared symbols and allusions are useful, and the more people who share them, the easier it is to communicate. They can also create pride and closeness within a culture.

Even in my younger days, I understood that the canonical pieces we use to create shared culture weren’t chosen in a vacuum. They were chosen by those in power, and that’s why the books I read in high school (and probably that you read too) were almost all written my white men. My way of counteracting that was to be thoughtful about inviting everyone into the literature. Shakespeare was writing in an Elizabethan context, yes, but that doesn’t prevent everyone from understanding the deeper themes therein. Akira Kurosawa was able to find King Lear just as compelling as someone born and raised in Stratford might. The people who chose the Great Works might have had racist and sexist (overt or covert) reasons to make those choices, but we all can still enjoy them together.

And I admit that I get a special charge out of watching all of my kids really getting into some of these texts. There is value to knowing what others find valuable to know.

I still believe all of that, and I have decided that we can change some of what we read.

The canon is shifting, and that’s okay. We can be a culture where people have all read Beloved and get just as much as we did out of all having read Henry James or Ernest Hemingway or others who have already been elbowed aside. 

I suspect we’ll always be looking at Greek Mythology and the Bible and Shakespeare: they’re just too embedded in too many parts of our culture to forget. We can celebrate the nuggets we share.

TKAM is likely fading away. And there’s no problem with that. When teacher Verena Kuzmany says “The usefulness of the book has run its course,” there’s some truth and wisdom to that. When Lee wrote the book, the only way that American audiences could stomach hearing about racism was through a White voice. Blessedly, that is different now. It’s time for English classes to show that difference. It’s time for our canon, and our favorite shared texts, to shift away from the 1960s. 60-plus years is a heck of a run, and Harper Lee is to be applauded for it. Nobody is going to take away her Pulitzer! But it is time us to find a new, more relevant cultural touchstone to share–one created by a non-White voice.

That said, I am glad that it is still an optional book so that students can discover it on their own, maybe even with the encouragement of a teacher who loves the book. The book is not so odious that it merits being on a high shelf where the kids can’t reach it. I think the school district was right to split the baby on this one.

So, that’s it: I can’t justify making my students of color feel excluded–both by a flat portrayal of characters of color as victims, and by being shut out of the books that they see year after year–even if it means they miss out on this specific great book that so many teachers love. The specific book doesn’t matter. As long as kids are looking at good books and thinking deeply about them, we’ll have great classes we can enjoy every year.

Wow! That was really long! I do hope that if you cared enough to read this far, you care enough to give me your thoughts. 

What is the purpose of a literature class, and how should the books we choose reflect that purpose?