To kill a springboard - a good text for schools?

[mids2019]

To my mind having read this at schooner primary theme was racism but not my daughter is reading it I can see how that false accusation of rape or sexual assault is also a major deliver of the narrarive.

Given that books such as this form a formative part of education for young boys and girls do we need to pick a book amongst the canon of literature which portrays accusations of rape and sexual assault as something that can be made up as a means of protection. or revenge?

We live in a society where routinely women are not believed when such assaults occur and to have a book such as this taught widely at secondary level seems to give the unfortunate picture that he's women do make it up and especially the white underclass.

I think this part of the story is problematic in 2025 and even though the theme of racism is well explored there is an undercurrent of misogyny in that we have a protagonist that makes up a rape allegation. No doubt false rape allegations are made in society but to have a major text focus on a rare incidence of false allegations flies in the face of a lot of modern relationship wducation.

Am I wrong to think maybe this classic text couk d be replaced by one the other many great novels in our literature?

Sorry for the typos!

Maybe get MN to correct your title OP?

I think US books dealing with race have fallen out of favour in UK schools, see also OMAM.

Sorry this tablet has awful autocorrect.

My daughter has to read this text at school and I think there are undercurrents of misogyny and class bias that I think in 2025 may be more apparent. The prime narrative involves a made up rape allegation by an underclass white girl and I think this is problematic in a modern context.

Surely there are better books that can be taught to working class white girls or is it too much of a classic?

To kill a springboard made me laugh 😂
Autocorrect is a bitch.

I get what you mean, OP. I recently introduced DS to the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, which I remembered as a socialist classic with a sub plot about infidelity.

Nope. It's date rape. Resolved along typical Victorian lines. I skipped the chapter 😳

It is a heavy book with a lot of adult themes. I'd be OK with it but I'd hope the teacher was putting in a lot of background discussion and I'd talk to my child about it at home too.

Yeah autocorrect sucks!

I just think that sexual assault is glossed over and for a 14 year old girl using vexatious sexual assault claims ias a narrative device isn't great. It all falls under 'she made it up' and maybe in 1930s US this may very well have been the case.

It's the description of a woman under oath being a sufficiently good lier to convince a jury of rape which sits badly with me. The prosecution lawyer is almost the antagonist of the book.

I just don't think this is a good book for girls.

I think it’s important to keep these books alive and talk about historical context.

Sometimes we should read uncomfortable things and then discuss why they’re now uncomfortable

But she isn't a sufficiently good liar!

They convicted due to racism. It was clear Tom(?) couldn't have done it due to his withered arm, but the all white jury couldn't be seen to believe him over Mayella(?).

Why did the withered arm stop him?

Because the testimony of Mayella said something about how he was pinning her down or something which was disproved by him being asked to stand so the jury could see he had no strength in the arm. Iirc.

He 'lost' the jury when he said he felt sorry for her. A black man shouldn't have had the temerity to think that let alone say it.

This is a really simplistic view of the novel.

Mayella Ewell has a choice - accuse Tom of rape, or admit she kissed a black man. The implications for the latter would ruin Mayella's life, given the context of the time.

Also, she is as much a victim of the white underclass as anyone else, seeing as we know she got her bruises from being beaten by her father, and there's an implication of more than that too.

Yes, it's a mature book with challenging themes, but it will be delivered by a trained subject specialist with the sensitivity it requires for the appropriate age group.

Trust the teachers in the school. If it wasn't an appropriate text, they would have dropped it.

As others have pointed out too, nobody on that jury - NOBODY - believes Mayella's story. They convict Tom because they couldn't be seen to take a black man's word over a white woman's.

That's why Bob Ewell (Mayella's father) tries to attack Atticus's children at the end, to get revenge for Atticus making an absolute fool of him at the trial. Everybody in the whole town knew it was Bob Ewell, not Tom.

There was definitely a subtext that Mayella was abused by her father. I think Atticus asks her about this in a roundabout way IIRC.