Ask anyone in humanities education what they think about To Kill a Mockingbird, and one thing is certain: they’ll have an opinion to share. Mockingbird, published 64 years ago, is a shining example of the adage that “two things can be true at once.” The novel is taught widely in US classrooms and, for many people, is a beloved and deeply important American classic. It is also problematic, deeply polarizing, and one of the most consistently challenged books of the last 60 years.
But as we know, holding two truths at the same time creates cognitive dissonance that can leave people uncomfortable and spoiling for a fight. And when we spend six decades fighting about the same thing, perhaps what’s really worthy of attention is not the thing itself, but our debate about it. To Kill a Mockingbird is undoubtedly a lightning rod, but it is also a cultural barometer. Paying attention to the conversation around it can give us a sense of our cultural concerns, fears, agreements, and disagreements, and how those things change—or don’t—over time. There has never been a time in which the book was universally accepted, but its challenges and defenses have evolved in fascinating ways from the 1960s to the present. In the 1960s and 70s, challengers called the novel “immoral” and “vulgar” for its sexual content. In the 1980s and 90s, critiques often focused on the book’s prolific use of racial slurs.
The debate around Mockingbird in schools reached a fever pitch in 2017 when the book was removed from the district reading list in Biloxi, Mississippi. The public forum of the internet overflowed with statements, from tweets to treatises, both critiquing and defending the teaching of the book in schools. As our nation reckoned with current and historical injustices, the debate took on new layers of nuance, focusing on the book’s decentering of Black characters, its dated and oversimplified treatment of racism, and its promotion of a “white savior” narrative.
As an English teacher and curriculum developer, I am also fascinated by arguments that our cultural love affair with the book might be predicated on a fundamental misinterpretation of its characters and themes. Of the famous quote, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it,” one scholar points out that Lee’s choice of “climb into his skin” as a metaphor rather than the more common “walk a mile in his shoes” points to the fact that what Atticus suggests is literally and figuratively impossible. Perhaps the book is actually about the limitations of our ability to understand the experiences of others, rather than the “anodyne” message that is typically marketed: that if we learn to adopt one another’s perspective, we’ll all be able to get along. While this argument may not make headlines, it points to the complexity of the novel and the nuance required to make sense of it.
It’s clear that Mockingbird is something we’ll be fighting about for a long time to come. But if you are an educator, you may have a pressing decision to make. About whether to teach the book, or about how to teach it in a way that creates meaningful and safe learning experiences for all of your students.
Here are some resources that can help you find the signal in the noise and make a decision that works for your classroom or school system.
Tools for Text Selection
If you have choice in what books you teach and are on the fence about Mockingbird, these resources can help you make a decision that is grounded in your students’ needs and informed by reflection about your own identity and relationship with the book.
The Principles of Text Selection section of our ELA Unit Planning Guide walks you through seven considerations:
- Consider your identity.
- Consider your students’ identities.
- Know your purpose.
- Examine text complexity (in a new way).
- Identify the text’s purpose.
- Consider the representation of adolescents and adolescence.
- Assess your readiness to address racist and other derogatory language.
These are principles I wish I’d had in my early days as a high school English teacher. In those early years, I often chose to teach a text because it was something I had loved as a young reader, only to find that it flopped with my students. In those moments, I was centering my own perspective and missing an opportunity to examine what texts my students might have similarly powerful connections with.
When selecting texts for the classroom, start with your purpose. What do you want this text to do? Is the first text that comes to mind one that you found personally meaningful? Are there other texts that do similar work but may be more relevant, more resonant, more engaging for your students? What harm could result from reading and discussing this text? Are you prepared and equipped to prevent that harm?
The ELA Unit Planning Guide also features several videos with Dr. Kimberly Parker, one of the founders of #DisruptTexts:
- In Humanizing Text Selection Dr. Parker invites us to ask, “What’s the text that kids need in this moment?”
- In Where Do You Start with Text Selection? she encourages us to look across our entire curriculum and consider what story it tells, explicitly and implicitly.
For a more concrete guide to evaluating specific texts, try using one of two text selection tools from Learning for Justice. They offer a condensed one-page version with 14 simple yes-or-no questions, and an extended version ideal for curriculum coordinators, literacy coaches, and book selection committees.
Once you’ve considered your options, you might land in one of three places:
1. Add Contemporary Voices to Your Curriculum
One of the most frequently cited critiques of To Kill a Mockingbird in schools is that it is often the only book in the curriculum that addresses racial injustice, and it does so through the dated, white lens of the young Scout. Consider adding or swapping in a contemporary novel that addresses similar issues and themes in ways that center Black voices and connect to your students’ lived experiences. These lists offer specific alternatives:
- 10 Books Besides To Kill a Mockingbird that Tackle Racial Injustice (PBS)
- Reading Alternatives to Three Problematic Classics (School Library Journal)
If you don’t find the right fit, check out these four sites that help you curate diverse, contemporary titles on a wide range of topics:
- #DisruptTexts
- NCTE Build Your Stack
- Social Justice Books: A Teaching for Change Project
- We Need Diverse Books
If you have enough time, you might consider pairing Mockingbird with one of these contemporary texts and analyzing the connections and contrasts between the two.
2. Expand the Historical Voices in Your Curriculum
Some Mockingbird supporters argue that replacing the book with contemporary fiction takes away an important opportunity for historical learning and reflection. There is an easy response to this criticism: teach literature by Black authors from the mid-twentieth century. Despite inequities in the publishing industry, the 1930s - 1970s brought us the seminal works of James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, Toni Cade Bambara . . . and that’s just a start. The novels, essays, and poems of these writers offer rich and varied windows into the decades leading up to and encompassing the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century.
3. Teach To Kill a Mockingbird with nuance and care for the emotional well-being of your students
With an understanding that Mockingbird remains a central part of the curriculum in many schools around the United States, Facing History continues to deliver resources to help educators navigate this text thoughtfully and deliberately. Our Teaching Mockingbird Guide and its accompanying resource collection support you in teaching Mockingbird responsibly by setting Harper Lee’s fictional story in its historical context, centering Black voices that are missing from the text, and examining the story and its messages with a critical lens.
