What are examples of the education motif, both formal and informal, in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird?

The recurring motif of education certainly runs all throughout Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Members of Maycomb society are educated both formally and informally. Though, often, those who receive only an informal education are those in the lower classes of society.One example of an informal education is seen when Calpurnia, cook of the Finches, references her son Zeebo. At one point, Jem asks Cal if she taught Zeebo, her eldest son,...

The recurring motif of education certainly runs all throughout Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Members of Maycomb society are educated both formally and informally. Though, often, those who receive only an informal education are those in the lower classes of society.

One example of an informal education is seen when Calpurnia, cook of the Finches, references her son Zeebo. At one point, Jem asks Cal if she taught Zeebo, her eldest son, to read. Cal replies, "Yeah, Mister Jem. There wasn't a school even when he was a boy. I made him learn, though" (Ch. 12). She continues further to explain that she did not teach him to read out of a primer, like Scout is being taught in school though she already knows how to read; Cal instead taught Zeebo to read daily out of the Bible and a book given to her by Scout and Jem's "Granddaddy Finch" (Ch. 12). Even Cal herself did not attend formal school. Instead, Miss Buford, the aunt of Miss Maudie Atkinson, taught Cal to read. The fact that neither Cal nor her son received formal education shows that members of the lower class, like what citizens of Maycomb would call the Negroes, were denied formal education.

A second example of informal education is seen in the education of Atticus and his brother Jack. As Scout points out, both Atticus and Uncle Jack Finch were educated by Granddaddy Finch at home on the Finch family farm called Finch's Landing. However, unlike the education of the Negroes, Atticus and Jack learned a great deal, for, as Scout points out, "Atticus and [her] uncle, who went to school at home, knew everything--at least, what one didn't know the other did" (Ch. 4) What's more, though they were educated at home  for their primary and secondary education, they both received formal educations for their professions. As we learn in the first chapter, Atticus attended law school in Montgomery and supported his brother through medical school in Boston. The fact that both Atticus and Jack are very educated despite having been taught at home before attending school formally shows that they are in a higher social class than the Negroes; they are in the upper middle class.