Importance of Moral Education

   In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, one of the themes involved is the importance of moral education because it plays a huge role in the development of the children into adults, and also gives insight on how moral education should be administered.Throughout the story, the reader follows Scout and Jem's journey from innocent naive children to mature adults. In the beginning of the novel Scout is viewed as a young girl who does not know how to act properly in a social environment and in other situations. However, after learning about morals, Scout points out at the end of the novel that she and Jem had learnt everything "except possibly algebra," (Lee, 321). She believes that she had learnt everything important to living a prosperous life, and Atticus, the father of the two, taught them all that they know about the goodness in the world. Scout often mentions things her father taught her about life, "'Atticus says cheatin' a colored man is ten times worse than cheatin' a white man. Says it's the worst thing you can do,'" (Lee, 229). This was one of the valuable lessons that Atticus was able to teach Scout. In the 1930s it was very important, especially to Atticus, not to cheat on a colored man, so it was important that he teach scout the same. At another point in the novel, Atticus teaches a beneficial lesson about courage, saying that he wanted to show the children “... what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do," (Lee, 128). Another large lesson that Atticus tries to teach his children is to step into the shoes of others in order to understand what they are dealing with. “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...until you climb into his skin and walk around in it,” (Lee, 33). This important piece of advice guides Scout’s decisions throughout the entire novel. Furthermore, Atticus has a different way of teaching his lessons, instead of using the school’s very strict and morally hypocritical way, Atticus uses compassion and gentleness. Scout's teacher, Miss Caroline, swears on a different method of learning that she discovered while attending college. This specific procedure did not work for Scout and made her despise school. Morally, this made Scout believe that the school was a terrible place, and made her never want to return. Scout then had it in her mind that learning was immoral, showing that the school’s teaching had not helped Scout at all.The novel's conclusion on moral education is that the most important ways to teach a child are those involving sympathy and kindness, and the most important items to teach are acting morally to another human being and morally in the outside world.