How does Scout act before the trial in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird?

Prior to the trial in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout's behavior can be classified as being a bit self-absorbed, since she is so young. But the trial allows her to become much more in tune with the things that go on around her, so she matures by losing her self-absorbed nature.

Scout's self-absorption is first revealed in her reactions concerning her first-grade teacher's behavior. Scout has a miserable first day of school, and one reason is because she responds badly to her teacher's behavior, which gets her into trouble. Miss Caroline, being new to Maycomb, offers to loan Walter Cunningham lunch money without realizing he is too poor to pay it back and that his family is too prideful to accept charity. When Scout tries to explain the ways of the Cunninghams to her teacher, saying, "You're shamin' him," she comes off as a bit of a know-it-all, which angers Miss Caroline. When Scout confides in her father about the things that went wrong on her first day of school, Atticus explains that the reason why she got into trouble is because Scout still needs to learn how to see things from others' perspectives:

First of all, ... if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view— ... —until you climb into his skin and walk around in it. (Ch. 3)

Atticus further explains that if Scout and Walter had seen things from Miss Caroline's perspective, they would have realized Miss Caroline had just made an "honest mistake" and can't be expected to "learn all Maycomb's ways in one day." If Scout had approached her teacher with more empathy, the problem would have been worked out much more smoothly.

Scout takes this lesson of seeing things from others' perspectives to heart a great deal, and after the trial, she is able to view the world with much more empathy. Her ability to feel empathy is especially expressed in her reaction towards her third-grade teacher's racism. In the third grade, a class discussion arises concerning Hitler's treatment of the Jews. Scout is surprised, even angered, to hear her teacher, Miss Gates, speak out against Hitler's treatment of the Jews and speak in favor of democracies because they eliminate persecution:

Over here we don't believe in persecuting anybody. Persecution comes from people who are prejudiced. (Ch. 26)

Scout is angered because, coming out of the courthouse just after Tom Robinson's trial, Scout distinctly remembers hearing Miss Gates speak in a prejudiced manner against African Americans, saying to Miss Stephanie Crawford, "[I]t's time somebody taught 'em a lesson," despite the fact that Robinson did not deserve his sentence since all evidence pointed to his innocence, not his guilt (Ch. 26). Scout's anger towards Miss Gates' hypocritical behavior shows us just how much Scout has learned to empathize with others, since it shows us she has become able to see things from Tom Robinson's viewpoint and the viewpoint of other African Americans.