To Kill a Mockingbird: timeless or outdated?

A hundred years on from the birth of Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird has lost little of its power. Yet despite its status as one of the most influential, and emotional, novels of the twentieth century, it is increasingly being challenged in schools and universities. For example, teachers at a liberal school district in Washington state have argued the novel is ‘outdated and harmful’ for centring white perspectives and exposing students to racial violence. A Scottish secondary school has replaced the book as part of efforts to ‘decolonise’ the curriculum, as they moved to centralise historically marginalised voices, and narrators from minority backgrounds.

The book hasn’t only been criticised from the liberal left. Michael Gove had already removed the novel from the English schools curriculum in 2014, claiming that British students needed to focus on UK literature. So, which is more important: the lessons embedded in novels or the identities they represent?

To Kill a Mockingbird remains one of our favourite novels, being voted the top novel by 4.3million Americans in 2018, and winning the UK’s ‘best loved book’ in the World Book Night survey in 2011. Defenders of Harper Lee counter that the novel’s enduring value lies precisely in its willingness to confront injustice, prejudice and moral failure. Far from celebrating racism, they argue, To Kill a Mockingbird challenges readers to grapple with it, offering an enduring appeal to common humanity and equality before the law.

With concerns across Europe and America that we are slipping back towards two-tiered justice, and retreating to polarisation over race and identity, what does this novel teach readers today? And why does this American novel, containing vastly different historical and racial experiences, evoke so much in readers across the UK?

As debates over censorship in the curriculum and the purpose of literature continue, what should students, and people more generally, be reading? Should classic works be judged by contemporary moral standards? Does shielding young people from difficult or uncomfortable material erode their ability to comprehend history and society? Are great novels not defined by their ability to provoke and evoke emotion? And, more than 60 years after its publication, what can To Kill a Mockingbird still teach us about justice, empathy and the possibility of overcoming social divides?