In Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, would Boo Radley’s problems be viewed and treated differently by his parents and teachers today?

To answer the above question, we must first consider what we learn about Arthur (Boo) Radley in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. If we do that, we can see possible reasons for why he was treated in the way he was, which will help us see if his treatment would be any different today.

Arthur Radley is what today we would call an agoraphobic, a person who is afraid to leave his or her house. While we don't learn much about his reasons for agoraphobia from reliable sources, we do learn a few things.

We actually gain our greatest insight when Scout meets him for the first time at the very end of the book. In Chapter 29, Scout describes Arthur as having "sickly white hands"; his hands are "so white they stood out garishly against the dull cream wall in the dim light of Jem's room." I addition, his face is as "white as his hands." Finally worth noting are Scout's following descriptions:

His gray eyes were so colorless I thought he was blind. His hair was dead and thin, almost feathery on top of his head. (Ch. 29)

These descriptions actually all match the descriptions of an albino. A person with albinism has little to no pigmentation in his of her "skin, hair, and eyes" due to the absence of melanin in the skin ("Albinism," U.S. National Library of Medicine). One symptom of albinism is extreme light sensitivity, and extreme light sensitivity can also make a person with albinism phobic of the sun ("Albinism," Gale Encyclopedia of Children's Health). While we understand much more about albinism today then we did in days of yore, the fact still remains that people have a tendency to reject and ostracize those they see as being "different." Therefore, due to his albinism, it is sadly likely that Arthur may have been treated by his parents, teachers, and other Maycomb citizens in much the same way today as he was in the book.

While we learn rumors at the beginning of the book about Arthur's mental status being questionable, we only learn such rumors from an unreliable character, Miss Stephanie Crawford, the "neighborhood scold" (Ch. 1). From the reliable character Miss Maudie, we later learn that Arthur's father was a "foot-washing Baptist" (Ch. 5). According to Miss Maudie, "Foot-washers believe anything that's pleasure is a sin" (Ch. 5). Miss Maudie offers Scout this information as a means of offering a possible explanation for why Arthur never leaves his house. It is possible he has been taught enjoying leaving his house would be sinful. There certainly are still Baptists today who interpret the Bible very literally. Therefore, it is even likely that today Arthur's parents would have instilled in him a fear of leaving his house, which, coupled with his albinism, would have made him even more afraid to leave his house.