Skip to main content

In To Kill a Mockingbird, why is Miss Caroline Fisher a good or bad teacher?

When Scout begins school in the first grade, her teacher is Miss Caroline Fisher, who has "bright auburn hair, pink cheeks" and crimson nail polish. She is a poor teacher, mostly because she is inexperienced. Miss Fisher is young, no more than 21, and she shows her inexperience in two main ways. First, she expresses unhappiness that Scout already knows how to read. She tells Scout to let Atticus know not to teach her anymore. Miss Fisher believes she has to "undo the damage" of Scout's early reading experience. A more experienced teacher would value a student knowing how to read. She also doesn't believe Scout when she says that Atticus didn't teach her to read.


Second, Miss Fisher shows her inexperience by not understanding that she should not have offered Walter Cunningham a quarter when he said he forgot his lunch. When Scout tries to explain that Walter will never bring a lunch because he's too poor and that the Cunninghams will never accept charity, Miss Fisher thinks Scout is being a smart aleck and hits her hand with a ruler. 


Miss Fisher is also supposedly bringing new teaching methods into town. Atticus tells Scout she needs to go along with Miss Fisher and a reader might expect that if Miss Fisher becomes more experienced, her teaching could improve. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.
Post a Comment
Read more