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Many schools give teachers freedom to modify their curricula. As such, you cannot replace to kill a mockingbird at the district level without banning it. I'm sure some teachers were already using a different novel (The Hate U Give is apparently popular, but is also banned in some places because it is supposedly anti-police). By barring the book from the curriculum, they force teachers to use better tools.

> Only someone completely incapable of critical thinking would lump To Kill A Mockingbird into the same category as Mein Kampf.

I don't see anyone doing that.

> Your bias is showing here, it's not cool.. There were plenty of unsavory characters in the book.

I don't know what you mean. I agree that there are tons of unsavory characters in the book. Atticus is not one of them. He's portrayed as nearly flawless. This plays into the White Savior[0] trope.

> If you're trying to teach white people and people who haven't experienced racism about racism, then this is a pretty good way to do it IMO.

That sounds appealing, but consider that the book's "central" Black character's defining characteristic is that he's not a violent criminal. That's the depiction of black people in the book. This, like I said, makes racism this abstract thing. And especially now when you generally don't have lynch mobs, it's easy to write off the book's entire story as "well we don't do that today, racism is solved!", which is yet another reason the book draws criticism as a teaching tool.

The book was perhaps good at a time when Black people were often presented as less-than-human, but now that they're usually just presented as less-human, less fully formed, different tools are better.

> If there are other, better books to read, then recommend other books. Don't ban this one because you don't think it goes far enough.

I actually already did that in this thread, and then explained why that doesn't fix the issue. There are likely already teachers using The Hate U Give or The Invisible man in their classrooms, but there are clearly some that aren't. Giving teachers a bunch of choices doesn't protect students from teachers who make bad choices. Ultimately, requiring that teachers use better teaching tools in their curriculums isn't the boogeyman it seems to be made out to be. Like, it's still staying in school libraries.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_savior