Although Scout's first-grade teacher, Miss Caroline
Fisher, is fresh out of college and well-educated in the newest educational trends,
author Harper Lee nevertheless creates the impression that she is the one who still
needs to be taught how to handle the children in her classroom. She proudly details her
upbringing in Northern Alabama, not realizing that the children (and their parents) have
little respect for people from this region. She overdresses on the first day of school,
appearing to Scout like "a peppermint drop." Her first story, about a cat, bores the
children who "were immune to imaginative literature."
Miss
Caroline then objects to Scout's advanced learning, telling her that she would "undo the
damage" and suggests that Atticus--probably the most intelligent and learned man in
town--"does not know how to teach." When she attempts to punish Scout by lightly
whipping her with a ruler, the class explodes in laughter; her attempt to discipline
instead has the opposite effect. Miss Caroline's troubles continue: She unknowingly
insults Walter Cunningham Jr. by offering him lunch money; she is cursed by Burris Ewell
when she demands that he bathe before coming back to school; and she poorly handles her
first experience with head lice. By the end of the day, it is the class who attempts to
comfort Miss Caroline, who is reduced to tears by the events of the
day.
Harper Lee's contempt for modern education is evident
throughout the story, beginning with the knowledge that Atticus has home-schooled
himself as a youngster. She deliberately has Jem misidentify the "Dewey Decimal System,"
and, later in the novel, condemns Scout's teacher, Miss Gates, for her hypocritical
views of Jews and Negroes.
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