this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2026
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Bad take, Mockingbird is great. Compelling and depressingly relevant to this day.
It's a good book, yes, but I was not interested in it and I had the executive function of a teenage boy.
If we catered education to only the things that appeal to the most distracted teenage boys it would just be tits and explosions.
Actually I'd like to argue the reflective point: why is there not an expectation that coursework should be interesting and compelling for students?
As you said, you had the executive function of a teenage boy. The works still get taught because they are interesting and relevant. but it's hard to see that as a kid, as you're developing vocabulary and literacy and also lacking life experiences to relate.
Schools try to compromise by giving a list of choices and letting students choose from those on what is most interesting. But curriculums only flex so much.
Yeah so there's this projection of, this is good and valuable to you, regardless what your circumstances and abilities are.
If it gets them writing essays and participating who cares?
Because analyzing themes and connecting it to history and sociology are important media literacy skills that high schoolers should be learning.
A Time to Kill won't fulfill that?
I think maybe "retributive vigilantism is good actually" isn't a school-appropriate message.
It's back to my first point
Well that's a skill issue. Just off the top of my head: Romeo & Juliet (most Shakespeare fills at least one of those), Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, 1984, fucking Canterbury Tales these are not boring stories it seems like you want vapid entertainment rather than education.
I forgot about Lord of the flies. So that's two books from 8th grade through highschool, I was not assigned the rest of those.
But sure, a time to kill is vapid compared to to kill a Mockingbird. The one where the black characters have agency, and the choices that the lawyer makes with intention matter and have consequences, is vapid. The one where the kids shame a lynchmob and that's the only real disobedience to the system shown in the book is superior.
The parents, apparently.