Scout's First Day of School

TL;DR: Scout starts first grade. Her teacher, twenty-one-year-old Miss Caroline Fisher, is horrified to discover she can already read, accuses Atticus of teaching her wrong, and forbids her to read at home — then makes things worse by trying to give Walter Cunningham a lunch quarter without understanding why he cannot take it.

Spoilers through Chapter 2.

Chapter in one sentence

A small girl who can already read stands at her desk while a young teacher, near tears, tells her she must stop.

What happens

September comes. Scout walks to the Maycomb County schoolhouse for the first time — past the Radley Place, which she has been ordered to ignore — and enters Miss Caroline Fisher's first grade. Miss Caroline is twenty-one, fresh from training at Winston County, and a believer in the "Dewey Decimal System" of progressive education. She reads "The Cat Family" aloud to the class. When she calls on Scout to read, Scout reads fluently — and Miss Caroline, rattled, tells her she has been taught wrong and orders her to stop reading at home. Things get worse at lunch. Walter Cunningham, a small barefoot Cunningham boy from the country, has no lunch. Miss Caroline tries to give him a quarter to buy one in town; Walter shakes his head. Scout, trying to translate the Maycomb social code — the Cunninghams do not take what they cannot pay back — earns a rap of the ruler on her palm and is told to stand in the corner. The class laughs.

Key moments

• Scout's walk past the Radley Place on the way to her first day of school
• "The Cat Family" read aloud, and Miss Caroline's discovery that Scout is fluent
• The order to stop reading with Atticus at home — and the unspoken horror at the heart of it
• The lunch-quarter incident with Walter Cunningham
• Scout's palm rapped, standing in the corner, the laughter of the class

Character shifts

Scout's first encounter with formal authority is a thudding failure on both sides. She has been raised to assume that adults are mostly fair and mostly correct; Miss Caroline is neither, and Scout cannot understand why. The chapter sets up the running argument of the next few chapters: the world outside the Finch household has rules Scout has not been taught and does not want to learn.

Why it matters

This is the book's first concrete demonstration of how the world fails its children. Atticus has read to Scout since she could sit on his lap; this is the first thing anyone in her life has been able to do that has felt like hers, and the school's response to it is to take it away. The lunch-quarter scene is the book's first concrete demonstration of how class — not race, not yet — sorts Maycomb. Walter Cunningham cannot accept the quarter for reasons Miss Caroline does not understand and will not be told. Scout's attempt to explain costs her a punishment. The chapter ends with Maycomb's social rules intact and Scout publicly humiliated for trying to articulate them.

Themes to notice

• Class as the South's first sorting axis (race comes later)
• The school as a small theater where Maycomb's rules collide with themselves
• Reading at home as a small form of family intimacy the institution wants to disrupt

Book club questions

• Miss Caroline is treated by the chapter as foolish, and yet she is also doing more or less what her training told her to. Is the book asking us to feel sympathy for her — or contempt?
• Why does Lee choose Scout's first day of school as the second chapter? The Boo Radley plot is already moving; why detour into the schoolhouse?
• Walter Cunningham cannot take the quarter and cannot say why. Scout can say why and is punished for it. What is the book showing us about the difference between knowing the rule and being permitted to say it out loud?
• Atticus has not appeared in this chapter at all. His absence is the strongest argument for him. Why?

Visual memory hook

A wooden ruler in a young teacher's hand at her side. A small red palm raised. A blackboard with "I AM" chalked at the top. Other small children's heads turned to stare.

What's next

Scout takes her frustration out on Walter Cunningham in the schoolyard at recess — until Jem invites him home for dinner, where Calpurnia delivers the lecture that is the chapter's real lesson.