You need to have read thru chapter three of To Kill a Mockingbird to respond to this topic.  If you have NOT read thru chapter three, please do NOT read further (as it will spoil/give away information you haven't read yet).

  • When talking with Scout towards the end of chapter three, Atticus tells her, "If you can learn a simple trick, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks.  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 39).  
  • Discuss and explore the meaning of this advice.  Why do so many people consider this a great piece of advice?  How might it apply to us today?  How could we use it in our everyday lives?  How is it like other texts we have read this past year?  (You do not need to answer all the questions--just explore Atticus' advice to his daughter.)

Tags: TKaMB

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Yes of course nobody would be that calm when someone is robbing their house, like you said, and would immediately call the police. But you can't blame them for not stopping to ask why that person is robbing he/she, because they are in a difficult situation and that person is still responsible for what he/she has done. 

Savage Apples, you will obviously call the Police because you are fearful of the things they are capable of due to the unknown fact of them being armed or not. I disagree with the fact that you will call the Police because " biases " create that fear, biases are generated from the things you assume and judge people about based upon many factors. I don't see how you would call the Police because you are creating a bias about a robber. It is a known fact that a robbers main goal is to come in your house and steal your things and most of them usually will injure anyone in their way of the goal which is to steal things. So your fear is generated from the fact that a dangerous person with bad intentions has invaded your house. They do not come into your house so you can discuss with them why they are doing so.

But wouldn't that be nice?  Honestly, if someone broke in, of course I want to protect my things and I would call the police, but there's another side of me that wants to understand why the person breaking in felt he had to steal from me in the first place.  Clearly though, if a person is breaking into places, things have gotten so bad, and it's too late.  We need to get in front of the problem and try to prevent it from happening in the first place.  I wonder what we could do to try and understand the mind of someone who feels the need to steal to better address this societal issue.  Any thoughts?

I feel like this is like the example in class where you said they interviewed an ISIS member when he left the group. Of course we know about the group and their intentions from the news, but do we really know their intentions? The fact that an ex ISIS member agrees to say the ideals behind the group without harm is opening up new possibilities for America and its tactics to stop the group. Although this is a good thing, there may be people who want to approach dangerous people and understand their reasoning, but they are dangerous so the person who is approaching doesn't want to be injured. Nevermind ISIS, lets take the situation of people against Trump supporters. We assume they are all like the President, yet have we really talked to the to see why they support them? I feel like people in society today are very stubborn and refuse to understand the other point of view and the opposing point. We are so confident in our point and that it is right, and don't get wrong wrong confidence is key, but over confidence can lead to being stubborn. This action of not wanting to understand the others point of view really makes us stubborn, but also we can lose out on the fact that we need the opposing side too. Just like in the TED talk by Arthur Brooks who talks about why conservatives need liberals- vice versa,"that comes only when conservatives recognize that they need liberals and their obsession with poverty, and liberals need conservatives and their obsession with free markets. That's the diversity in which lies the future strength of this country, if we choose to take it" ( Brooks). The opposing sides need each other to be ONE. In Summation, if we don't take the next step into being empathetic towards others and try to understand their point of view, this will lead to a world full of stubborn people leading to disaster because remember , two wrongs don't make a right.

         I think that many people consider this a great piece of advice because it helps them understand how others feel. To build on this idea more, it teaches people how to be empathetic because they are putting themselves in other people's shoes. Furthermore, it leads people to become more understanding individuals because they are not seeing things from only their point of view. In chapter 3 of the book "To Kill A Mockingbird", Atticus said "If Walter and [Scout] had put [themselves] in [Miss Caroline's] shoes, [they] would have seen it was an honest mistake on her part."(Lee 30). From this evidence one can conclude that if a person tries to see an issue from someone else's point of view, he/she will begin to understand how the other person feels. Moreover, he/she will start to realize that the other person is not a bad person just because he/she sees things a different way. Thus, a person who tries to see things from another person's perspective, will become a more accepting and open-minded person because he/she recognizes and understands all viewpoints.

  I think this is a great piece of advice because it helps the readers and Scout to understand that if you really wanted to understand a person you have to be put in their position to see the difference between you and the other person.By that i mean people shouldn't judge other people when they don't know what has happened to them or what is happening to them.So by doing so you actually have to open your eyes and see the difference that is between other people.When Atticus was talking to Scout he was saying that "I had learned many things today, and Miss Caroline had learned several things herself... but if Walter and i put ourselves in her shoes we'd have seen it was an honest mistake on her part"(Lee,30).Atticus was trying to explain to Scout that if a person makes a mistake you have to put your self in their shoes and see that it was not intended.This evidence shows that don't judge people when you don't know their whole background story.What do you guys think about the advice do you agree or disagree.

This piece advice can be taken in multiple ways, and the way I see it is that it is telling the person that in order to get along with others one must understand others and put themselves in that persons place before making a single judgement. It, in a way, relates to empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand others- putting your self in their shoes; and that's exactly what Atticus is telling her. And this piece of advice is looked at greatly by others because it really is the only way that you can get to know and understand others, its the only way that we as people can get closer to others. It is the key to a better society- its the key to an ideal community. The only reason that there is a lot of separation till today is because we as people make judgments based on what we see in a split second - and that is why we are not getting any closer. We are continuously make wrong judgments and all that's doing is splitting us up. And example of this is when a parent sees a homeless person and decides that she/he is not to give the homeless money because she/he assumes that the homeless person will spend it on drugs- its simply wrong, its separating us as a society. And within the book "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee it is easy to notice that there is a lot of racism that is splitting the people, they even go to say "the sheriff hadn't the heart to put him in jail alongside Negros" (Lee 14). And this shows that the white people didn't even what to put the white kid next to a black person. There is clearly a lot of racism and the only way that this racism can be eliminated is by using this piece of advice. By using this advice we can move towards those who we fell uncomfortable around. We can become one as a society- that's why i believe that this piece of advice is crucial for an ideal community/society. 

 I absolutely agree with Void because you will not have an Ideal community if there's judgment all the time.People will never get along and get together to form an Ideal community because they are always judging people and NOT actually putting them selves in the other persons shoes or place.In the book " To Kill A Mockingbird"by Harper Lee, you realize that there is a lot of separation and judgment going around the Maycomb County.When Jem was giving a description of Boo he said "he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch that's why his hands were bloodstained..."(Lee,13).This shows that the people of Maycomb are just judging and not talking to one another or putting them selves in his/her place.This also shows that Maycomb will not have an Ideal community because all the people do there is just judge people and separate them selves from other people.So what do you guys think, would an Ideal community have to do with not judging and and no separation or not?

To answer your question Blossom, I honestly and full heartedly believe that an ideal community would require people to not judge and not differentiate or separate. That is said because we will never be able to have an ideal community if people are constantly judging each other, because that only leads to separation. Look at how we are today; it's because we as people are making these quick wrong assumptions that are only splitting us up. And its the same within the book called to kill a mocking bird; it states and I quote "a negro would not pass the Radley Place at night, he would cut across to the sidewalk opposite and whistle as he walked" (Lee 11). This comes to show that people would avoid the Radleys only because of the things they hear. And that's the problem, we as people are too quick to make judgments, and that why i believe that an ideal community shouldn't have any separation or judging. 

People think this is great advice because it helps people to look at something from a different view.You feel what others going through. For example, Atticus says that if he were to put himself in the teachers shoes he could see how the mistake could have happened. Once you understand what other people are going through you stop judging them so quickly. Atticus tries to explain to Scout that some rules are okay to bend with special situations. So this is great advice from Atticus to teach his daughter to think about the other persons point of view before judging their ways. 

Hmmmmm.  So what rules are ok to bend and which are ok not to bend?  Seems a very tricky issue!

But are rules made so one could bend them? Rules are made so that people are safe, or punishments are given to those who deserve them. The point of rules become invalid if one bends them, even if they had a good reason to. But I see where both Motive, and Teacher Brother are coming from. But the problem with bending rules is that once you bend a rule one might take it as an okay sign to bend a rule themselves. Its sort of how a student talks in class when they aren't supposed to, so then other students decide to talk because that one student started talking.

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