Teaching an Important Book

My juniors are taking a test on TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD right now. I love teaching that book. It is not perfect - does have some objectionable elements - but these young people have no idea how people of other races were treated so terribly back in the early part of the 20th century. Those people had no rights whatsoever. The book is a tremendous way to show rather than tell what happened. A story often works better than a straightforward lecture.

I remember moving to Alabama at the end of the segregation era, seeing the laundromat across the street from our house with the sign WHITE ONLY in the window, and asking Mother where people were supposed to wash their colored clothes. I remember driving past the blacks-only school and knowing instinctively that it was second-class to our school and that that was not right. I remember touring an old medical office from the '50s here in town, and noticing there was an extra room off of the office - "What is that?" "Oh, that was the black peoples' waiting room."

No matter what tensions exist today because of people insisting on affirmative action and race-based policies - which I disagree with very much - the treatment of blacks in those days was wrong and cannot be condoned.

The teenagers are both fascinated and appalled by what they read. They had no idea that things were like that. I think it is important that they find out.