The Role Of Education In To Kill A Mockingbird

In To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee’s Message about education in the 1930’s shows that schooling is not always fair.

“It takes a village to raise a child”, is an African Proverb. In other words, it can take more than just a child’s nuclear family to make her grow into who she will be as an adult. This lens is true because even though parents and siblings have a major effect on a child, and how they turn out later on in life, society and a child’s surrounding are what really shapes, and makes them who they are. What a child sees when he or she is new to the world, and doesn’t know everything, effects their behavior, and outlook on their life ahead. This lens is illustrated in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by

The Finches live in a neighborhood with various others. Their family is more fortunate uttermost people who did not have a house during the Great Depression. Atticus has worked as a lawyer, to accumulate an amount of money for his family. The Finch’s started school at the appropriate age and are moving through school at the appropriate rate. Jem and Scout are certainly educated children with a father that teaches them how to read and write. Atticus Finch and Scout like to read together, although Miss Caroline is very displeased. She was displeased because ever since the Great Depression, children didn’t attend school and teachers were fired and children weren’t educated, which surprised

Being at the top of the social hierarchy has been a must for every American of past generations, but can lead to fatal damages for some trying to obtain that goal and a cause to ruin people’s lives. In a remarkably triumphant story on compassion, Harper Lee explored the horrors of racial prejudice in the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Set in the 1930’s, the poor town of Maycomb, Alabama has been hit by the depression hard, which created a vast, complex social pyramid, with distinct families and lifestyles. At the Finch household, composed of a little nine year old girl, Scout, a twelve year old boy Jem, and their father Atticus, proceed through a whirlwind of events throughout the next few years. Atticus, a lawyer who is a hardworking, honest man at the top of the social hierarchy of Maycomb, has to defend a colored man by the name of Tom Robinson. This happened to be very unusual for the time period, as the family has to transcend through the struggles in a racial prejudice town and learn the raw nature of the worst in humans, thus trying to overcome these events through compassion. The author utilizes metaphor, characterization, and mood to describe the situation of Maycomb, it soon then becomes very clear that the dangers of ruining innocence can lead to a vast road of horrors and evils.

The Cunningham family was very poor. They did not take anything from anyone that they could not pay back, therefore Walter did not take the quarter. Scout was then punished with slaps on the knuckles and she was put in the corner. Scout was angry at Miss Caroline until Scout talked to Atticus. He believed that Scout and Walter should have put themselves in Miss Caroline 's shoes. " Miss Caroline had learned several things herself. She had learned not to hand something to a Cunningham, for one thing, but if Walter and I had put ourselves in her shoes we’d have seen it was an honest mistake on her part. We could not expect her to learn all Maycomb’s ways in one day, and we could not hold her responsible when she knew no better." (Lee page 30). Walking in Someone Else 's shoes is important to the story because it helps the characters understand the other characters situations.

The second social class was the middle class which was the Finch Family. Atticus was a lawyer, his salary was modest, therefore; he brought decent amount of money home for the family “Atticus derived a reasonable income from the law” (Lee, 2)

In societies like Maycomb, Social class determines the way families and people are treated and limits your everyday actions. The Cunninghams a family of a low class, are treated differently. Scout once said ¨ He ain't company, Cal, he's just a

In his article,“Herd” Mentality Explained, Rick Nauert Ph.D. talks about how we as humans tend to follow things even when people may never even realize it. This connects to how Lee uses the characters of Jem and Scout to show the struggle of choosing between following the herd or being an individual.

Lawrence Kohlberg was an American psychologist and educator known for his theory of moral development. He was a professor at Harvard University before he was a developmental psychologist. He later moved into the field of moral education. Jean Piaget (Swiss psychologist), John Dewey (American philosopher), and James Mark Baldwin (American philosopher and psychologist) all influenced Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, though Piaget 's work heavily influenced Kohlberg’s. Kohlberg ran tests to prove his theory.He tested 72 boys from middle and lower class families who were either 10, 13 or 16. Later in his research, he tested both boys and girls from different states and countries other than Chicago. Kohlberg found

In books, many characters go through moral development. The book To Kill A Mockingbird shows many examples of characters that go through this development and characters that help others develop. While there are many different characters in the book, the focus is on the development of Jem and Scout Finch with the help of Atticus and Calpurnia. The kids are introduced when they are young and over the span of the book, the adults teach and help them, making them have a different understanding of the world only two years later. With the guidance of Atticus and Cal, Jem and Scout go through a big moral change.

Lawrence Kohlberg is known for his theory of moral development developed in 1958. His theory was dependent on the thinking of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget and American philosopher John Dewey. It consists of three levels of moral reasoning: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional. These levels are based on the degree to which an individual accommodates to the conventional standards of society. Each level aquires two stages that serve as different standards of sophistication in moral reasoning. Overall, Kohlberg affirms that moral development is a process of maturing that emerges from thinking about about moral issues (“Kohlberg’s Moral Development”).

A moral: “To be concerned with the principles of right and wrong behaviour, and the goodness or badness of a character”. Harper Lee’s, “To Kill a Mockingbird”, evidently shows the importance of morals, and how Jem and Scout's development is affected and modified as the plot unfolds. In the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird”, there are multiple debatable morals induced by Jem and Scout, and both their ways of being. Scout was able to progress throughout the plot, exceeding herself along the way. Jem as well had an increase of growth as the novel developed.

Mr. Cunningham was one of Atticus client’s, and Walter’s father paid him back in a form of goods, “-because that’s the only way he can pay [Mr. Finch]. He has no money” (27). The children are often hungry, they are clean and respectful due to how Mr. Cunningham has influenced them, showing the reader that all one needs is a good influence to keep one on the right

Class and family history is an important part of tradition to many of the people in Maycomb. When Aunt Alexandra comes to visit, she feels it her duty to impress upon Scout the importance of her roots. Aunt Alexandra forces Atticus to explain to Scout that she is "not from run-of-the-mill people, [but] the product of several generations' gentle breeding"(p.133). Aunt Alexandra feels that people are born into a certain class, and should, therefore, behave accordingly. If you are born into a high class, you will always be considered high class, and if you are born into a low class, there is no use to strive for anything higher. The result is that families are repeated in each generation with similar attitudes and character shadings. The objective is obviously to refine the classes and keep them pure. Aunt Alexandra and many other men and women in Maycomb praise the distinction of class. To them, having high blood is seen as sacred and there

In Harper Lees’s masterpiece, To Kill a Mockingbird, moral education is a theme that only seems to bloom within the Finch household and is severely lacking in all of Maycomb County. The main character, Scout Finch, is growing in an environment where manners and education matter, this is a quality that can be attributed to the teachings of Atticus Finch and Calpurnia. In a world that is corrupted by prejudice, moral education is form of behavior that stands out, Harper Lee provides examples of this in Calpurnia’s discipline at home, Atticus’s ethical guidance and explanations for the reasoning behind his defense of Tom Robinson, and Scout’s bewilderment at Ms. Gate’s hypocrisy. Moral education is a theme that plays a core role in the development of the title characters as well as the deterioration of the town’s moral standards.