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. After the war, like many other ethnic minorities, despite his
extensive training, 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. To Sir, With Love is a 1959 autobiographical novel by 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 school there. The novel was made into a film in 1967.

Trying to present a short plot of the story we can say that Ricardo 'Ricky' Braithwaite is a British
Guiana-born engineer who has worked in the USA and an oil refinery in Aruba. He is unable to find
work, despite his qualifications and experience, meeting overt anti-black attitudes. But after
discussing his situation with a stranger whose name he never learns, he applies for a teaching
position and is assigned to a secondary school in London's East End.

The Chapter (8) under discussion is about that most of the pupils in his class are totally
unmotivated to learn and largely semi-literate and semi-articulate. But he persists, despite finding
that they are unresponsive to his approach.

Braithwaite decides to try a new approach, and sets some ground rules. The students will be leaving
school soon, and will enter an 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.

The author’s primary purpose is to try to do his best in a worder to demonstrate the children that
he is not indiffent :”Thereafter I tried very hard to be a successful teacher with my class,…I
bought and read books on the psychology of teaching in a effort to discover some way of providing
the children with the sort of intellectual challenge to which they would respond… ” The narrator
feel “ a mixture of relief and disappointment” after having read a few of his pupils’ reviews ‘cause
they did not meantion anything about him, apart that they had a new “blackie” teacher. Very little
attention was given to him because the children had before only transient teachers. The author
understands, in fact, that he passed three phases in his relationship with the children:”The first
was the silent treatment…”, the pupils’ trying to get acquainted with the new teacher “… they would
do any task I set them without question or protest, but equally without interest or enthusiasm…”.

The second phase was called by the author “the noisy” one:”during a lesson, especially one in which
it was necessary for me to read or ti speak to them, someone would lift the lid of a desk and then
let it fall with a loud of bang; the culprit would merely sit and look at me with wide innocent eyes as
if it were an accident.”

The last phase was when one of the girls, during the lesson remarked to all the class crudly with
some, usual for them, jargonisms:” The bleeding thing won’t stay up…”. The author felt sick at heart.
It seemed to be latest act…above all others.

The school described in the extract was situated in the East End of London. The pupils attending it
had been poorly fed, clothed and housed. Some were from homes where the so-called bread-winner
was chronically unemployed. I think that the children’s background can account for their bad
language and misconduct and a teacher can expect such a behavior under this circumstances. But, on
the other side, it can be because the teacher is black...at that time it was a problem.
To me this is a perfect teacher because thinks all the time that he is guilty and he do smth wrong.
He do not see the problem in children but in himself, trying all the time other methods and doing
his best.