Posted on 02/26/2005 8:52:48 AM PST by churchillbuff
Pardon the vanity, but since there seem to be a lot of Freepers who are southerners, I thought I could solicit their perspective/experience. The family and I rented "To Kill a Mockingbird" last night. First time I'd watched it in years. A moving film, I grant you. Peck is inspiring. But let's face it, the whites (and blacks) are stereotyped. There are few whites (Atticus Finch and family, the judge, maybe the sheriff) who are anything but vile. For all the "sentimental" remembrances of her childhood by ex-Southerner Harper Lee, in fact this story is a slam on the South. So I ask: Is it read in Southern schools? If so, what do the kids take away from it: a sense of shame about their region?
Do you mean Jackson Prep?
Or JA?
My best friend graduated from the former. I can't remember if she read it. She usually bought the Cliff Notes or whatever they're called. Or she asked me. :)
I've been trying to remember what novels we read in high school. Silas Marner was one. And The Scarlet Letter. We did not have Honors or AP English my senior year at my school, and all seniors had the same CBOK requirements in all the JPS. That meant the requirements were very very few. It was NOT college preparatory.
lol
I went to the same school as Bourbon when it was founded and I am not a Preppie.
OMG!
Is that so?
When it was founded?
Makes you sound OLD...lol.
Hey! Reading Farenheit 451 is very good. It will hopefully insure that the left wing commies will never get our society to be like that.
BTW- Sadly I can already see quite a few of those charcteristics in the world now.
Hmm. I'm a Southerner but I didn't know what "common" was. Geuss I'm not a very Southerner. :<
Opened doors Fall 1971.
I know.
Bourbon mailed me the info.
I know I'm older than you.
Until 1985ish some public schools in Jackson were rather decent. Then the brilliant educators at Central Office decided to implement an experiment intended to improve the level of education that ALL JPS students receive. It was called CBOK, the Common Body of Knowledge. All 11th grade history teachers in JPS were given the exact same learning objectives, and they were ordered to teach them. Multiple choice tests were made by committees of teachers, and all 11th grade history students took them until they passed. (or that was the way it was supposed to work.) For really bright students, school became a vacation. AP classes did not have CBOK curricula, but there were only a few AP classes offered at my high school. Honors classes had the same exact curricula as regular classes, and students rebelled if the teacher(s) tried to teach them any more than CBOK required. (really. i had a teacher who tried to give us more to do, but a bunch of parents said their children did not have to do the extra and could not be graded on the extra stuff.)
I vaguely recall stories of what happened in the public schools right after forced busing began. There were teenagers carrying chains and other such stuff around my high school. My neighbors' removed their children at that time and sent them to private schools. By the time my brothers and I started school, violence had subsided, and the public schools were fine. At least in my neighborhood. I do not think that my best friend, who went to JP, received a superior education at all. She was more prepared for the country club life. I have been impressed with what I have heard about JP in recent years.
You are so OLD! Just kidding.
Yes they do. My kids had to read it and do reports on it. Freeper Alkhin was in the play about a year ago, in Houston area theater, Ft. Bend county.
Yes they do. My kids had to read it and do reports on it. Freeper Aikhin was in the play about a year ago, in Houston area theater, Ft. Bend county.
I'm impressed. I would have been even more impressed if you said, "I never heard of it". Now THAT would be somebody uncowed and unbowed by political correctness!
What town was his restaurant in?
I'm inclined to agree, which is why I brought this vanity post - - to see if I was totally out to lunch. At least one person - you - seems to sense something's up with all of the emphasis on Harper Lee's book in high school, -- somethimg other than a pure commitment to literature.
It has some slams on the South, or on the way things were done in the South back then, but mostly it is a story of a man with great personal integrity who has to go against the mainstream for what he knows is right.
The part where the Sheriff spares Bo from being a hero is also significant. The boy wants no attention and the Sheriff spares him that.
(If I made any mistakes here, forgive me. It's been 30+ years since they made me read it.)
We got rid of that. We kept the good stuff and trashed the cr-p. It was not easy and it came at a high price. It was worth it.
The South is stronger than ever and as beautiful as it ever could be.
churchillbuff, I think you will find that the blacks are portrayed as very dignified and decent, and the few whites that are sympathetic are ones in certain positions of power, which is important in telling the story, and indicative that society then was able to recognize the evil of the Jim Crow laws and racism and how a person's worth should not be judged by their skin color. I think the story was very realistic in showing the various attitudes and thoughts of people at the time. Southerners knew the racism was evil, but in some cases the racism so ingrained that it was easier to just live with it rather than fight against it. I really don't know how Mockingbird could be a slam against white people when it did such a good job of showing the various viewpoints that existed at the time.
You wouldn't happen to be associated with some outside forum groups seeking to infiltrate Free Republic, would you? Anyonw who reads Mockingbird and is familiar with the story and has a thinking brain comes away understanding how difficult things were then for every one. To go about looking for slams against a particular race, be it black or white, reeks of someone with an agenda.
The Pickrick in Atlanta.
Atticus Finch comes off as a very good man and he is quite clearly very southern. His attitude is one of fairness and I don't think that's a rare commodity anywhere among ordinary people in this country.
My aunt used to teach AP English, and she taught TKaM. She taught in a state to the south of Alabama but thoroughly infiltrated by those darn folks from up north. She taught Faulkner, too. She loved to teach literature. Especially literature written by southerners and full of interesting characters, good and bad.
I remember the White and Colored signs on restrooms and drinking fountains. I thought that was just plain stupid even as a little kid and I would use which ever one was available. I love how you described the South. I live in Texas now.
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