To Sir, with love.
Edward Ricardo Braithwaite (born June 27, 1920) is a Guyanese novelist, writer, teacher, and diplomat, best known for his stories of social conditions and racial discrimination against black people. He was born in Georgetown, Guyana. Braithwaite had a privileged beginning in life: both his parents went to Oxford University and he describes growing up with education, achievement, and parental pride surrounding him. Braithwaite's numerous writings have primarily dealt with the difficulties of being an educated black man. After the war Braithwaite could not find work in his field and, disillusioned, reluctantly took up a job as a schoolteacher in the East End of London. The book To Sir, With Love (1959) was based on his experiences there.
This particular extract acquaints the reader with the main character of an educated black man, who got a job as a teacher in a school for difficult children. Further on, it describes the pupils’ welcome of a new “blackie” teacher, which was far from being a warm one and the three phases in their relationship. Then we are shown the teacher’s attempts to get though to his class and inveigle them into active interest. By the end of the extract we understand that he had failed.
This is a first person narration which I consider to be the best way to represent one’s life experience. This way the reader becomes fully aware of what the character is thinking about and therefore gets to understand his subsequent actions more clearly. It’s also easier to see the problem the character seeks to solve and to catch the message in whole. So, the idea is transparent: how should the teacher act in order to obtain the acknowledgement of his pupils so that to be able to teach them efficiently and why this goal is so difficult to achieve for a black teacher?
As an exposition, I would like to point out this so called “Old Man’s pet scheme” of every student writing a Weekly Review with comment on any subject as long as it concerns with the school. Whatever the principle (the Old Man) would say about improving pupils’ written English, I think he actually had needed to know what his pupils were thinking of everything going round. This might have really helped him to run the school packed mainly with children from dysfunctional families, for I doubt that that time any officially approved teaching program for such institutions would exist.
The development of the plot began after the teacher had read about himself in the reviews. In the narration he uses such words as ‘association’, ’transient’, ‘predecessors’ which prove him to be well educated. But despite this fact he seems to have a lack of self-confidence and that’s why he feels relief after having found out that very little attention had been given to him in the reviews. But also feeling disappointment, he has decided to improve himself as a teacher and to impress his class. But making this plan real turned out to be an undertaking. This is proved by an epithet ‘painful procession’ and metaphors ‘to reach the children through a thick pane of glass’, ‘to take great pains’. But no matter what books on psychology of teaching he read, the class remained ‘remote and uninterested’. The teacher believed that the reason for that was that the pupils hadn’t considered a new ‘blackie’ teacher to be permanent.
So, the first phase of their relationship started and it was called the ‘silent treatment’ which indicates the absence of pupils’ enthusiasm. The author uses a simile here ‘ and if the interest was not required for the task in front of them would sit and stare at me with the same careful patient attention a birdwatcher devotes to a rare feathered visitor…’. Summing it all up he calls it ‘conspiracy of indifference’.
The second phase turned out to be noisy. When the teacher had to speak or read a lot during the lesson some one would make a loud bang with a lid of their desk. To indicate his great displeasure the author calls the child who had done it a ‘culprit’ which is surely a hyperbole. The teacher’s conviction that he could do nothing about it and therefore had to bear it ‘with as much show of aplomb’ seems to me to be a feature of his week personality.
The last ‘bleeding’ phase appears quite unacceptable and incomprehensible to me. If I were a teacher I would have not tolerated swearing during my lesson and would have at least called the class to order or set a couple of detentions. But what did the teacher do? He just ran for it and was found in the library in a very pitiful condition reveling in his tremendeous misfortune of having such vicious children for a class. But what has he expected? They are only children after all.
I believe, being black or white doesn’t matter in this case. You are a teacher and you are a priori in charge. So it’s just up to you what kind of figure you cut in front of your pupils. I hope that in the end the teacher has understood that and gathered strength to master the class whether by inspiring fear (which seams very unlikely) whether by obtaining their love.

Code of a Good Teacher.
Teachers are important and make a difference. The quality of teaching is a crucial factor in promoting effective learning in schools and universities. Effective teaching requires individuals who are academically able and who care about the well-being of children and youth and who work in a shared and collegial way with other staff.
I believe if you have chosen to become a teacher you should follow one general rule: you love your role, you love being with your students and you couldn't imagine doing anything else. You were meant to teach, you know this in your heart. I think the teacher should also be patient and know that little steps in learning go a long way.
When it comes to the efficiency, I think, the direct effect of good teaching on pupils is difficult to assess, as relating ‘good teaching’ directly to higher attainment in pupils is almost impossible to verify. However, here are my attempts to analyse what constitutes a ‘good teacher’. The following points seem to me to have an impact on pupils:
The good teacher must
-be highly knowledgeable and up to date in their subject area, but do not pretend to know it all, willing to learn from pupils.
-resourceful and positive and adopt a problem-solving approach
-creative and imaginative and have an open attitude to change
-systematic and well organised, focused, determined and hardworking
-demonstrate empathy and fairness, are caring and approachable.
These points might seem mediocre but I believe them to help the teacher to encourage pupils to think, to make connections, to practise and reinforce, to learn from other learners and to feel that if they make mistakes they will not be ridiculed or treated negatively.
It is very difficult to point out a good teacher’s demands from pupils or students of different age groups but if I were a teacher I would want my class to follow these general rules:
-not to be late
-to show respect to me and to other students
-not to be afraid to ask me questions
-to keep their bad behavior and low spirits out of my classroom but not to forget to take their homework done with them.
I believe these simple- to-follow rules to help the teacher to be viewed as “easy going”, “relaxed”, with an “open” manner and to bring a relaxed atmosphere to the classroom which I’m sure is the best for successful teaching.

Into the Wild

When I was reading this passage I could easily imagine all the beauty of the wild American West. And I also believe that I’ve got the author’s point. In his opinion, youth is exactly the right time for a person to get some adventure experience, which includes escaping “routine” city life. He suggests that one should go into the wild in order to enjoy the marvelous sceneries that God has placed around to discover, and to do things which one may previously never have thought of doing.
It has been mentioned that a lot of people live unhappy lives. The reason for that is that they are too accustomed to security, conformity and conservatism. This all seems to be very damaging to the adventurous spirit of a person, which the author believes to be vital for human. But this is what I disagree with.
In my opinion you don’t have to avoid the community to experience life. It’s ok if you are attracted with a bit of adventure but is it worth of giving up your family or your friends or your love or even your favourite job? I believe that things like hiking (in company, which seems more attractive to me than roaming around the mountains alone) or traveling are able to satisfy your need of some adventurous activity. The youth is a period when you lay the foundation of your future life and it appears to me to be a waste to spend this precious time being nomadic.
So to sum up, I would like to say that the author seems to have been deprived of all those things I wrote above of and he decided to find out what else life can provide him with after his escaping into the wild.

Irish stew

Jerome Klapka Jerome (2 May 1859 – 14 June 1927) was an English writer and humorist, best known for the humorous travelogue Three Men in a Boat. Jerome was born in Caldmore, Walsall, England, and was brought up in poverty in London. His main genre is humour. Other works include the essay collections Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow and Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow; Three Men on the Bummel, a sequel to Three Men in a Boat; and several other novels.
This is an extract from his novel Three Men in a Boat. It describes a small village called Sonning which they had passed through during their river-trip. Then the three men found a place near the village to put up for the night. Since they had time till nightfall they decided to make an Irish stew. First, they started to peel the potatoes, which turned out to be an undertaking. Then a cabbage and half a peck of peas were put in the pot. Finally, they gathered all odds and ends and remnants of their food which included such things as half a pork pie and a tin of potted salmon. All these ingredients were put in the pot and stirred thoroughly. After a while their dog turned up with a dead water-rat in his mouth. After some arguments between the three men the rat was added to the stew as well. The dish in the long run turned out to be "fresh" and "piquant" and what’s also important nourishing.
To my mind, the author tries to point out that some sorts of actions which seem to look rather odd in everyday life turn out to be helpful under certain circumstances. For instance, lack of normal ingredients appears as rather a problem in the text, but the resource shown by the three men helped them to cope with the task of making a praiseworthy supper.
The message seems to be positively transparent here. When you face an obstacle it’s always up to you which sort of option you are going to use in order to solve the problem. And sometimes your daring if it is forceful might help you to find a very non-standard but efficient solution.
This is a 1st-person humorous narration with some descriptive passages (Sonning). The main mood of the extract is cheerful and one might almost say skittish.
Due to rectilineal narration and its logic the composition of the extract might look as follows:
1.Coming to sweet Sonning and further put up for the night and the decision of making an Irish stew.
2.
- Difficulties with the potatoes peeling
-The overhaul of all the food remnants and their stirring in the pot
- Montmorency’s contribution and further discussion as to whether the rat should go in or not.
3. Harris’s sarcastic but weighty argument about people who hamper world’s progress by having chosen the safe side to be on, settles the matter.
4. A great success in the end.
The description of Sonning is very vivid. There are a lot of epithets here:’’splendid’’, ’’fairy-like’’, a metaphor “smothered in roses” so the image of a really beautiful village I would like to visit is performed. To point out the meagre food supply the author uses an idiom “odds and ends” . The author uses exaggeration “It’s men such as you that hamper the world’s progress’’ and contrast ‘’...as for the gravy,it was a poem-a little too rich, perhaps, for a week stomach, but nutritious’’. To me the campsite pot, filled up with so many different ingredients, seems to be a metaphor for the idea of a collective way of solving a problem by everyone proposing various options.
The narration is very optimistic in general. Readers are put in the atmosphere of a calm evening spent on fresh air with friends. Some practical advices of cooking included. Reading is positively entertaining and inspired me on reading the whole novel.

Text Analysis

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
This extract is an introduction to “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams (1952-2001), an English writer and dramatist, alumnus of Brentwood School and a B.A. in English literature (St John's College, Cambridge). This piece started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television series, several stage plays, comics, a computer game, and in 2005 a feature film. Adams's contribution to UK radio is commemorated in The Radio Academy's Hall of Fame. Science fiction, comedy and satire are the literary trends he belongs to. His main literary pieces are “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”, ” The Restaurant at the End of the Universe”, ”Life, the Universe and Everything”, “So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish”, “ Mostly Harmless”.
The text appears to be split up in two parts. The first is a short ironical description of the Earth and the second is a review of a book called “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”. There used to be a problem on Earth: most of the inhabitants (undescended life forms called humans) being mean and mostly miserable, were unhappy for pretty much of the time and the best way of sorting out this problem has always concerned with money. But, before a better solution was revealed a terrible catastrophe had occurred.
The book is described as the Galaxy’s encyclopedia. It contains useful knowledge for those who are going to hitchhike across the Galaxy.
I think, the main problem raised by the author is that humans have generally become a “race of consumers”. Vast majority of people can’t help having money on their mind at first place, having forgotten the basic moral values. This obsession brings many of us to misery.
The main idea of the extract, in my opinion, is that if the situation weren’t changed the humanity would end up with a huge catastrophe, brought either by excessive consuming of minerals or a war for the rest of the minerals left.
The first part of the text is a humorous narration with descriptive passeges, which satirically underline the pettiness of our society, followed by a short account of events: a girl’s brilliancy on Thursday and the following catastrophe. The second part is fully devoted to the book’s humorous description.
The main mood of the “Earth” part is positively pessimistic and even tragic, though with a bitter humor. The “book” part is cheerful and emotional.
The composition of the extract due to its obvious incompleteness and disorderly may be structured as follows:
1. The Earth sarcastic description ( “…utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose undescended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea")
2. The problem of the planet (“…most people were unhappy”)
3. The brilliant solution (“…how the world could be made a good and happy place.”)
4 The sudden catastrophe (“… a terribly stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever").
5. The “Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” review.
6. The outcome of the extract appears to be the start of the book itself.
According to the plan above here’s more detailed analysis.
The description of our planet is pessimistic and ironical at the same time due to such epithets as “uncharted”, “unfashionable”, ‘primitive’, ‘insignificant’. The metaphor with digital watches is to emphasize the problem of a “race of consumers”. Apes’ coming down from trees is called ‘a bad move’ and ‘big mistake’ which clearly states irony as well as oxymoron 'unregarded yellow sun'.
Next, one girl came up with the idea of how to make the world prosper and “ … no one would have to get nailed to a tree”. This ironical reference to Jesus might let readers think that the author was an atheist.
The catastrophe is described hyperbolically as “terribly stupid” which proves the author’s idea of humanity’s wrongly chosen path.
The Guide is compared to some other books published on other planets, which are so funny titled. For example “Some of the God’s Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway”. Thus, the author’s slighting attitude to religion is proved easily.
To sum up, the author’s most commonly used language means in the precise extract are bitter irony and sarcasm which makes reading this peace entertaining and sets one’s thinking.

What is more important Friendship or Duty?

In my opinion there is no definite answer to this question, but I think the duty is the priority. Usually, the one who is on duty is responsible for other people, let alone him- or herself. Thus, personal relations yet not deliberately may do harm to people who have nothing to do with those relations at all.
I believe that friendship is a feature of one’s inner world. This is why it can be a criterion of one’s personality. Russian classical literature (“The lyceum’s brotherhood” and “ to Chaadaev ” by Pushkin for example) claims friendship to be the biggest value of men’s intercommunication. Moreover, it claims friendship, honour and what more important the soldier’s duty to be the whole.
I would like to mention O’Henry(Bill Porter) himself. In terms of friendship it was all very complicated to him. There was a run of bad luck in his life, when he was accused of theft and misappropriation of banking money. Bill had to flee to Honduras in order to avoid arrest. He met Ell Jennings there, another exile, who used to be a train robber. They became close and staunch friends and many years after Ell used to help Bill (who had already become famous by that time) a lot by driving loads of blackmailers off.
In story “After twenty years” O’Henry had tried to find even if not the Answer, but the contacts between friendship and duty. Patrolman Wells’s feelings had been hidden from readers but his plain phrase in the note “somehow I couldn't do it myself” had proved that the choice he had had to make had been very difficult. If i were on his place i would probably do the same, for me, having chosen the profession of a policeman, would've meant abiding law and helping people. And cathcing a criminal even though your friend is a great contribution to common welfare, not to mention that the person you haven't seen for 20 years might have changed quite a lot. Such kind of duty like police work implies giving up one's relation bounds for greater good's sake.
It seems to me that, the meaning of notion “friendship” is personal to everyone. To me, being a friend means to be ready to help either morally or materially, to share, to give something up if you have to. But sometimes, it appears to me that, in nowadays pragmatic world the essence of the term “friendship” has been substituted by “a-stuff-that-hampers-your-business”. As a result, friendship and duty have come close enough to becoming antonyms which bring us to making the necessary moral choice.
I, personally, will try and do my best to live my life the way which will not force me to make this painful moral choice at all.

Where the Trail Forks

The more I read the better I realize that the intensity of fiction is not somehow linked to its volume's size. Thus, even a small piece of work can exert a huge emotional influence upon reader.
“Where the Trail Forks” by Jack London is such a piece to me. This story is about the times of gold-rush. I believe, this very metaphor indicates the unhealthy atmosphere at that time, precisely the thoughts and what more important the actions of men who would go to Alaska for gold output.
The story is about four gold diggers who were about to leave their campsite and go back home, having successfully finished the working year. There was an Indian girl, called Sipsu, who used to come and sit near the camp-fire and talk to those four men with the pale faces. So, one night she came to them and told them calmly that a sacrifice would take place in their tribe the follwoing day. And for the need was great the witch doctor had chosen none other than Sipsu, the chief's daughter. One of the diggers, called Hitchcock, was revolted at the savagery and suggested that they all should go and fight for the girl with the Indians. But his tired mates chose to remain contemplative and do nothing. Then, at night, Hitchcock alone stole the girl from her wigwam and they were just about to leave unnoticed but one of the dogs they were riding started barking. The fight began but Hitchcock managed to save Sipsu and they started on a long journey to the nearest town. All the Indians became extremely brutalized and came to the diggers' camp and killed Hitchcock’s friends the following morning.
Was it the right thing Hitchcock had done? I believe it was, for he was a civilized man and the one who was able to save the indigenous girl. Even from her own ignorance.
What about his friends? Were they supposed to stop Hitchcock and let Sipsu die, or should they have probably endangered their lives for a reason not many people would have considered to be sensible enough to die for? There's no straight answer for me here, but it's obvious that Hitchcock and his fellows went their seprate ways after they had faced the necessity of making a choice.
And even though it hadn’t been mentioned whether Hitchcock and Sipsu had managed to reach any town I've got to know one thing for sure.When life brings you to making a decision it’s better to regret having done something than regret having done nothing.