Overview:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee are both written in the voices of children. While each book gives an unabashed commentary of the social mores of the times and places where they are set, our students can learn about attitudes about education from these periods. Examining primary documents will also show what schools of the time had to offer their students.

 Background:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the story of a fourteen year old boy from Missouri who is dissatisfied with his life and sets out on a journey along the Mississippi River.  He teams up with a runaway slave named Jim and the two of them travel south on a raft. The novel is set during the Antebellum Period. Huck and Jim meet many different people as they float along the river; some are people of good will, while others are not so nice. Through the people they meet and the adventures they encounter, the reader learns about the attitudes, grudges, strengths, and weaknesses of people who lived at a time when slavery was practiced.  Twain tells his story in the vernacular and from the point of view of a country boy who lives by his wits and charms.

To Kill a Mockingbird is set in Alabama in the 1930s. This story is told by Scout Finch, who begins her account the summer before she enters first grade. As Scout tells about her small town and the people who live there, it becomes clear that there are deep racial and class tensions within this community. These tensions erupt when a poor white woman accuses a black man of raping her.

Both novels explore the attitudes and prejudices of the people within them. Because the stories are told by children, their commentary and criticism of society is less guarded than it might be, had adults told these stories.  Huck and Scout have strong fathers with their own ideas about the value of education. Huck’s Pa demands that he stop going to school because in his family there is no need to know how to read. Atticus Finch spends most of his time at home reading. As a young child, Scout picks up reading on her own, much to the frustration of her first grade teacher.

The idea of compulsory education in the United States is attributed to Thomas Jefferson. Unlike many other countries, in the United States the responsibility of providing education for children was given to individual states.  During the nineteenth century, schools systems were set up to meet the needs of a particular state, whether the purpose was to educate children from a rural community or to socialize immigrant children. It wasn’t until 1918 that all children were required to attend primary school up to the eighth grade. During Huck’s time schooling was offered to boys of means. By the time Scout went to school, education was compulsory, but if you read Chapter Two of To Kill a Mockingbird it is clear that many children of limited means did not attend regularly. In both cases the schools that these children attended would have been racially segregated.

Materials:

• Chart paper
• Attitudes towards Education sheet (click here)
• T chart recording similarities and differences
• School sheet (click here)
• Documents and images (click here)
• School Then & Now (click here)

Aim/Essential Question:

What can we learn from novels about attitudes towards education and schools in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries?

Motivation:

Ask the students to jot down what they think a parent or adult family member would say if they were asked if it is important to learn how to read and go to school. Have the students share their thoughts and record what their ideas on the chart paper.

Objectives:

• Students will read and discuss selections from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird.
• Students will view and analyze pictures and images that relate to schools and education during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
• Students will use their own school experience to write a piece of fiction.

Procedure Day One:

Introduce The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird to the students by giving them a synopsis of what happens in the novels, and an explanation of the significance of both novels.  Explain that we can learn about past times from the descriptions in novels.

This activity can be done in a way that works best for the students. Distribute the Attitudes towards Education sheet to the students and read it with them. As a whole or small group activity use this sheet to generate a discussion about the different attitudes towards reading. Refer back to the chart that lists the student’s ideas.

Ask the students what they think kids in the past thought about school. Distribute the School sheet and read it with the students. Using a T chart to record similarities and differences jot down how these quotations compare to the students’ own experiences in school today. 

Day Two:

Divide the students into groups of three or four. Distribute a different document to each group and ask the groups to complete the School Then & Now sheet. Once the students have had an opportunity to discuss what they see and complete the sheet, have each group present their findings to the whole group.

Day Three:

Ask the students to name some of the things they learned about schools of the past. Discuss the different ways that they learned this information, through selections from novels and by examining pictures. Ask how students can tell people in the future about schools as they are now. Suggest that an interesting way to do this is to write a fictional account using school as the setting. Have the students write fictional stories that are set in their school.

Closure:

Have the students share their writing with each other to see which aspect of the school experience each focused on. Create a profile or present day history of your school by using the details that the students incorporated into their stories.

Extension:

Use selections from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird to explore attitudes about other aspects of society, such as racial tension during the Antebellum Period and the Jim Crow era.