Scout's First Day of School — To Kill a Mockingbird

Scout starts first grade already sure of herself as a reader. For years she has sat in Atticus's lap with the newspaper, and she expects school to welcome that skill. Instead she meets Miss Caroline Fisher, new to Maycomb and to teaching. Miss Caroline comes from Winston County, a place the town still treats as foreign. She brings college methods and does not know the families in the room. When she discovers Scout can already read, she tells her Atticus must stop teaching her at home so the learning can be undone and rebuilt the proper way. Scout argues. Miss Caroline slaps her palm with a ruler and sends her to the corner. The thing she loves most about home is, in this classroom, a fault.

At lunch Miss Caroline sees that Walter Cunningham has brought nothing to eat and offers him a coin to repay tomorrow. Walter will not take it. He is a thin boy from a farming family that owns land and still goes hungry. Scout stands up and explains what every Maycomb child knows: Cunninghams do not take what they cannot pay back. Walter's father once needed Atticus for an entailment and settled the fee in hickory nuts, stove wood, and garden produce. A lunch loan is, to Walter, another debt he cannot honour. Miss Caroline hears only impertinence. The ruler comes down on the same hand. Scout has been slapped for reading and slapped for telling the truth about a neighbour.

At recess Jem tells her Miss Caroline is only finding her feet. Scout is in no mood for patience. She knocks Walter down and rubs his nose in the dirt, blaming him for the classroom scene. Jem pulls her off, takes in the patched clothes and the empty lunch, and invites the boy home to eat. Walter accepts after a careful pause, because a Finch table is not a coin on a teacher's desk. The three of them start toward the house.