What might be a good thesis statement based on Chapter 2 of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird?

In To Kill a Mockingbird, one way in which author Harper Lee uses Chapter 2 is to expose the inadequacies of the public education system, especially in the rural South. Lee exposes the inadequacies of the public education system through Scout's experiences on her first day of school.

Scout opens the second chapter by describing how excited she is to start attending school; as she phrases it, "I never looked forward more to anything in my life." Yet, unfortunately, Scout's first day of school was very disappointing because she found it stifled her learning development rather than enhanced it.

One way in which her learning development is stifled is through her teacher's reaction to her reading abilities. Scout's first-grade teacher, Miss Caroline, is very shocked to discover that Scout can already recite the entire alphabet, "read most of My First reader and the stock-market quotations from The Mobile Register." However, instead of being proud of Scout's precociousness and suggesting she be moved up a grade or two, Miss Caroline tells Scout to tell her father to stop teaching her to read, saying, "I'll take over from here and try to undo the damage-- ... . Your father does not know how to teach," despite the fact that Atticus did not teach Scout how to read; reading just came naturally to her. Later in the day, when Miss Caroline catches Scout writing a letter in cursive because she is bored, Miss Caroline's response is, "We don't write in the first grade, we print. You won't learn to write until you're in the third grade." Clearly, Scout should have been moved up to the third grade instead of being held back in the first grade; she is only being held back because her teacher is too prideful and ridiculous to acknowledge Scout's accomplishments. Later, Jem explains to Scout that Miss Caroline has learned a very strict method of teaching in college that soon every grade will be using. Author Lee uses Miss Caroline's reaction towards Scout's precociousness to criticize such strict methods of teaching, pointing out that such methods do nothing but stifle a student's growth and development.

In addition to treating Scout poorly, Miss Caroline inadvertently embarrasses Walter Cunningham by offering to loan him lunch money he can't afford to pay back. Miss Caroline inadvertently embarrasses him because she has no knowledge of Walter's family situation since she is not a native Maycomb resident; instead, she's from Winston County in North Alabama. Through the paragraphs concerning Walter, author Lee shows us that quality education can only truly be taught by those who are intricately familiar with their students, including their students' social and cultural backgrounds.  

If we understand Lee's purpose in writing the chapter, we can easily turn our understanding into a thesis statement. One might consider something like the following:

• In To Kill a Mockingbird, author Lee uses Chapter 2 to criticize the public education system by pointing out its flaws such as educators' hesitations to promote students, educators' strict college-taught educational theories, and the fact that many educators are new residents and, therefore, social and cultural outsiders.