Why Is To Kill A Mockingbird So Important To High School?

Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird is academically beneficial to high schoolers. The novel contains interesting topics and issues that engage students and is widely praised for its brilliant use of language skills which is useful to all aspiring writers and struggling high schoolers. Scott Martelle shares in his article “Educators Take a Hard Look at ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’” the many opinions teachers and writers hold about Harper Lee’s book, beginning and ending with a positive view on the story’s messages. Martelle explains the novel’s role in high schools and how “it has evolved into a key classroom tool for teachers” (1). Martelle quotes Nancy Louise Rutherford, a former English teacher at Los Angeles’ Belmont High School who says
This shows that teenagers will not recognize the full importance of these issues Lee’s novel discusses or how this ignorance will impact their’s and other's lives without reading To Kill a Mockingbird. Without this book, students will be missing key messages involving morals and the struggles about accepting and agreeing with others. In another work from the UK Telegraph, journalist Urmee Khan writes in her article “To Kill a Mockingbird voted greatest Novel of All Time” about the various prizes and awards Harper Lee’s bestselling novel has received but also continues to praise its timeless story and the many books Khan’s survey finds it superior to, including The Bible. Khan describes To Kill a Mockingbird as a “1960s classic” that has sold “30 million copies worldwide,” obviously showing its popularity (1). Khan later goes on to quote The Bookseller magazine's deputy editor, Joel Rickett, who states that “To Kill a Mockingbird is… a hugely powerful and political book that has formed many a
The novel’s narrator is a young girl named Scout who shares her childhood with the audience, many of the events that occur and emotions she feels being somethings readers can relate to, even if it is in different ways. According to Tom Geoghegan, writer of the article “Why is To Kill a Mockingbird so popular?”, Harper Lee’s novel is “a huge critical and commercial success” and has gained its popularity through the hundreds of ways it pulls the heart-strings of its readers (1). Geoghegan quotes many writers, professors, and lecturers who all agree that Lee’s book is an emotional piece of work that can easily relate with adults just as much as children, Denis Flannery, an American literature lecturer at the University of Leeds, elaborating that idea by stating that “it’s very much a novel about an argument for justice, a novel where children struggle to obtain justice… Every adult has a memory of being unjustly treated as a child” (2). This means that not only does Harper Lee’s novel, a story about the journey through childhood, appeal to a young audience because of its relatability, but adults also find it parallels in some ways with their own lives and memories of when they were younger. This shows that To Kill a Mockingbird is a wonderful piece of work in which readers can find parts of