THE INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF THE CARIBBEAN

College of Leadership and Theological Development

An Assignment

Submitted in partial fulfillment of requirement of Bachelor of

Education in Primary Education

Movie Review

ISSUES IN CARIBBEAN EDUCATION

Submitted to:

Mr. Steffan Sheriffe

Submitted By:

Tashauya Latoya Johnson

 The Movie TO SIR WITH LOVE takes us through the life of the author, Edward Ricardo

Braithwaite, who despite having excellent qualifications is denied job suited for his education

because of his Skin colour. First Published as a book in 1959, the exquisiteness of ‘To Sir, With

Love’ lies in the portrayal of relationship between a teacher and his students.Being one of the

first black teachers in the British school system, he recounts his first year as a teacher in this

autobiographical novel/ Movie. He is persuaded to take a job as a schoolteacher at a unique

school in London’s East End, a notoriously impoverished and tough part of 1940’s Post War

London. His students, mostly White European immigrants, are typically from unemployed

families, have very little money, and are habitually filthy and malnourished. Students are sent to

Greenslade Secondary School due to disciplinary problems. Despite their low socioeconomic

status, and lack of basic academic skills, Braithwaite, a black man from British Guyana, sees his

students as privileged simply because they are white. The struggle between teacher and student is

a tutorial in critical pedagogy, and take the reader on a journey of internal examination, and

individual accountability. In many ways, Braithwaite’s Movie is a positive example of

educational methodology, and the human connection needed between teacher and student. Some

of the issues of education depicted in the novel are poor attendance which leads to chronic

underachievement, Underachievement in mostly males, functional illiteracy in most students.

And finally students performing way below their grade level. Theses issues can also be founded

in our current education system in Jamaica.