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.