Martin Longman examines the controversy over the required teaching of To Kill A Mockingbird in Washington State schools. I agree with him that allowing each teacher or school to teach or not teach the book is the right decision, but the arguments made against requiring the book were terrible. The idea that the book does not represent the Black experience or speak to a Black audience is accurate. Neither, presumably does Huckleberry Finn, Crime and Punishment or The Scarlett Letter. The idea that a book must speak to your experience is simply a faulty way of looking at literature. If anything, you read to expand your understanding of the world beyond your personal experience.
The idea that To Kill A Mockingbird does some sort of harm or is pernicious towards a student is part of the overall balkanization of education. Now, should Washington State schools also teach Beloved or The Bluest Eye? Abso-fucking-lutely. Not because it would necessarily validate the lived experience of Black students but precisely because it might expand the horizons of White students.
The world does not exist to make you feel good about yourself. It does not exist to place you in the center of your own universe. Education should make you intellectually uncomfortable.
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