4.2 To Sir, With Love: E. R. Braithwaite
Introduction:
To Sir, With Love is a 1959 autobiographical novel by Eustace
Edward Ricardo Braithwaite born in 1912 known as E. R. Braithwaite set in
the East
End of London. The novel is based on true events concerned with
Braithwaite taking up a teaching post in a Greens lade school there. The novel
is composed in 22 chapters with every possible detail which gives a remarkable
insight into the politics of race and a class in postwar London. In 1967, the
novel was made into a film, To Sir, with Love, starring Sidney Poitier and Lulu, and the
film's title
song became a number-1 hit that year. The setting for the film was changed
from post-war London to the "swinging sixties", and,
notwithstanding its success, Braithwaite had ambivalent feelings towards it, as
he admitted in an interview with Burt Caesar conducted
for a 2007 BBC Radio 4 programme
entitled To Sir, with Love Revisited (produced by Mary Ward
Lowery). Also in 2007, the novel was dramatised for Radio 4 by Roy
Williams and broadcast in two parts, starring Kwame Kwei-Armah.
Plot:
Ricky Braithwaite is an engineer
from British
Guiana who has worked in an oil refinery in Aruba. Coming to
Britain just before the outbreak of World War II, he joins
the RAF and is
assigned to aircrew. Demobbed in 1945, he
is unable to find work despite his qualifications and experience due to racism.
After discussing his situation with a stranger, he applies for a teaching
position and is assigned to Greens lade School, a secondary school in London's East
End.
Most of the pupils in his class are
unmotivated to learn, and are only semi-literate and semi-articulate. He
persists despite their unresponsiveness to his approach. Students attempt to
discourage and demoralise him by disruptive noises, constant use of the
adjective "bleeding" in the
classroom and, finally, the burning of a used sanitary towel in the fireplace.
This last causes Braithwaite to lose his temper and reprimand all the girls. Braithwaite
decides to try a new approach, and sets some ground rules. The students will be
leaving school soon and will enter adult society, so he will treat them as
adults and allow them to decide what topics they wish to study. In return, he
demands their respect as their teacher. This novel approach is initially
rejected, but within a few weeks the class is largely won over. He suggests
out-of-school activities including visits to museums, which the students have
never experienced before. A young teacher, Gillian Blanchard, volunteers to
assist him on these trips. Some of the girls start to speculate whether a personal
relationship is budding between Braithwaite and Gillian. The trip is a success
and more are approved by the initially skeptical headmaster.
The teachers and the Student Council
openly discuss all matters affecting the school including curricula. The
general feeling is that Braithwaite's approach is working, although some
teachers advocate a tougher approach. The mother of one of the girls speaks
privately to Braithwaite about the girl's troubling attraction to nightlife, feeling that he
has more influence with her impressionable daughter. Braithwaite and Gillian
fall deeply in love and discuss marriage. Her parents are openly disapproving
of a mixed-race
marriage, but realise that the couple are serious and intelligent and must be
trusted to make the right decision.
Summary of
Chapter 17 in ‘To Sir, With Love:
The Half-Yearly Report of the
Students' Council, an assembly entirely arranged and presented by the students
themselves, is held on November 15. Miss Joseph and Denham preside, and
the meeting begins with an address by Mr. Florian, the headmaster. Following
his lengthy but well-received presentation, each class takes a turn reporting,
through their chosen representatives, on what they have been studying in each
subject so far. Finally, a panel of teachers is chosen for each class to answer
any questions pertaining to the reports which have been given. The lowest class
begins first, and it is obvious that as the students progress through the ranks
there is "a marked development in their ability to express
themselves." Mr. Braithwaite's class, being the oldest, goes last. Miss
Joseph begins the highest class's proceedings by explaining that the common
theme underlying all their studies this term is the interdependency of mankind.
Potter speaks in the field of math, focusing on how greater understanding in
the world is fostered by the use of common weights and measures.
Miss Pegg and Jackson speak on
geography, and Miss Dare and Fernman discuss the subject of physiology, with
Fernman stealing the show by exhibiting a model of a human skeleton and stressing
the class' conclusion that "basically all people were the same." Miss
Dodd reports on history and Miss Joseph on domestic science. Denham creates a
stir by speaking on the required subject of P.T. and games, complaining that
the class "was ill-conceived and pointless. Mr. Weston, Mrs. Dale-Evans,
and Miss Phillips are chosen at random to answer student questions arising from
the senior presentations. When Denham pursues his inquiry on the necessity of
requiring all students to take P.T., Mr. Weston responds quite ridiculously,
trying to bluster his way out of the subject, and offering no coherent
argument for the requirement's continuance. Surprisingly, quiet Miss Phillips
steps in and gives a sturdy defense of the practice, and Denham, knowing that
he has been outwitted, has no choice but to respectfully cease his heated
protest (Chapter 17).
Criticism:
In a review of several of
Braithwaite's books, F. M. Birbalsingh wrote: Unfortunately,
the narration of Mr. Braithwaite's problems in To Sir, With Love is
greatly weakened by the rapid and simple solutions that he offers. As his
frequent acceptance of glowing tribute from admiring colleagues suggests, what
chiefly concerns Mr. Braithwaite, regardless of the problems at hand, is the
satisfactory projection of his own image as a rather talented and thoroughly
civilised black man. All that To Sir, With Love really achieves is a
sordid demonstration of the author's vanity. Nor is his description of
specifically racial problems any more discerning. Mr. Braithwaite is shocked
when refused social status equal to a Briton with academic qualifications and level
of conduct similar to his own; and he constantly stresses the ease with which
he could assimilate into British society if only his colour were disregarded,
Prejudice against him is unfair, he claims, because of his social
accomplishment, not because of his humanity; and he implies thereby that
prejudice against black people who lack similar cultural habits may be
justified.
Questions:-
1) Is ‘To Sir, With Love’
a true story?
Ans: To Sir, With
Love is a 1959 autobiographical novel by Eustace Edward Ricardo Braithwaite
born in 1912 known as E. R. The novel is based on true events
concerned with Braithwaite taking up a teaching post in a Greens lade school
there.
2) What did they burn in ‘To
Sir, With Love’?
Ans: The theme of
empowerment is at the center of director James Clavell's sleeper hit of summer
1967, To Sir, With Love. Mark Thackeray (Sidney Poitier) is an out-of-work
engineer looking for a job. First, Thackeray enters the classroom where a young
woman has burned a feminine hygiene product.
3) Who was the teacher in
To Sir, With Love?
Ans: Poitier gives a
quaint example of being proper and turning the other cheek. Although he
controls himself with difficulty in some of his confrontations with his class,
and even flares up on one occasion, he never acts like a boor, the way one of
his fellow teachers (played by Geoffrey Blaydon) does.
4) Who died in To
Sir, With Love?
Ans: Braithwaite,
the Guyanese author, educator and diplomat whose years teaching in the slums of
London's East End inspired the international best-seller To Sir, With Love and
the popular Sidney Poitier movie of the same name, has died. He was
104.
5) What is the setting of
To Sir, With Love?
Ans: The setting
of To Sir, With Love is the East End of London. The author, Edward Ricardo
Braithwaite, wrote about his personal experience teaching in London's East End.
