That the young narrator of To Kill a Mockingbird goes by the nickname "Scout" is very appropriate. In the story, Scout functions as both questioner and observer. Scout asks tough questions, certainly questions that aren't "politically correct," but she can ask these questions because she is a child. As a child, Scout doesn't understand the full implication of the things happening around her, making her an objective observer and a reporter in the truest sense.
The reader should keep in mind, though, that To Kill a Mockingbird really presents two Scouts: the little girl experiencing the story and the adult Jean Louise who tells the story. The woman relating the story obviously recognizes that her father is exceptional. However, the child Scout complains "Our father didn't do anything…he never went hunting, he did not play poker or fish or drink or smoke. He sat in the living room and read." The child Scout marvels that her father knew she was listening to his conversation with Uncle Jack; the adult Jean Louise marvels that he wanted her to overhear the conversation.
Although the story takes place over the course of three years, Scout learns a lifetime's worth of lessons in that span. Here, too, the reader should remember that in many ways To Kill a Mockingbird is Scout's memoir — the adult Jean Louise can better understand the impact of various events than the child living through them.
Scout hates school because in many ways it actually inhibits her learning. Her teacher is appalled that she already knows how to read, instead of celebrating that fact. She is bored waiting for the rest of the class to catch up to her skill level, and she doesn't have more than a passing respect for either of the teachers she describes in the story.
The most sympathy she can muster toward a frazzled Miss Caroline is to remark "Had her conduct been more friendly toward me, I would have felt sorry for her." And she is offended by Miss Gates' comments about African Americans after her staunch and moving support for the Jew's in Hitler's Europe. As a sign of her maturity, though, at the end of the story she realizes that she doesn't have much more to learn "except possibly algebra" and for that she needs the classroom.
