Author | E. R. Braithwaite |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Autobiographical novel |
Publisher | Bodley Head |
Publication date | 1959 |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
Media type | |
Pages | 200 pp (paperback) |
Awards | 1961 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award |
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 the true story of Braithwaite accepting a teaching post in a secondary school. The novel, in 22 chapters, gives insight into the politics of race and class in postwar London.
In 1967, the novel was made into a film of the same name starring Sidney Poitier and Lulu. The film's title song became a U.S. No. 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). [1] Also in 2007, the novel was dramatised for Radio 4 by Roy Williams and broadcast in two parts, starring Kwame Kwei-Armah. [2]
To Sir, With Love was included on the "Big Jubilee Read" list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, selected to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II in June 2022. [3]
In 2013, Ayub Khan Din adapted To Sir, With Love for the stage as part of Royal & Derngate, Northampton's Made In Northampton season. The play was directed by Mark Babych and starred Ansu Kabia in the title role and Matthew Kelly. [4] This was the first theater-adoption of the book. [5]
Ricky Braithwaite is a black 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 Greenslade 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 sceptical 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.
In a review of several of Braithwaite's books, F. M. Birbalsingh wrote: [6]
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.
Alfred Gardner self-published An East End Story , in which he recalls being a pupil of Braithwaite. [1]
The novel has been compared with the 2011 novel To Miss With Love by Katharine Birbalsingh. Beyond the similar title, both novels have autobiographic elements about teaching in working-class London. [7] Birbalsingh, of Guyanese heritage herself, introduces a Guyanese boy character as an apparent nod to Braithwaite. [8]
To Sir, with Love is a 1967 British drama film that deals with social and racial issues in an inner city school. It stars Sidney Poitier and features Christian Roberts, Judy Geeson, Suzy Kendall, Patricia Routledge and singer Lulu making her film debut. James Clavell directed from his own screenplay, which was based on E. R. Braithwaite's 1959 autobiographical novel of the same name.
Summerhill School is an independent day and boarding school in Leiston, Suffolk, England. It was founded in 1921 by Alexander Sutherland Neill with the belief that the school should be made to fit the child, rather than the other way around. It is run as a democratic community; the running of the school is conducted in the school meetings, which anyone, staff or pupil, may attend, and at which everyone has an equal vote. These meetings serve as both a legislative and judicial body. Members of the community are free to do as they please, so long as their actions do not cause any harm to others, according to Neill's principle "Freedom, not Licence." This extends to the freedom for pupils to choose which lessons, if any, they attend. It is an example of both democratic education and alternative education.
Eustace Edward Ricardo Braithwaite, publishing as E. R. Braithwaite, was a Guyanese-born British-American novelist, writer, teacher and diplomat best known for his stories of social conditions and racial discrimination against black people. He was the author of the 1959 autobiographical novel To Sir, With Love, which was made into a 1967 British drama film of the same title, starring Sidney Poitier and Lulu. The narrator is an engineer, but to make ends meet, he accepts the job of teacher in a rough London school.
The Lovely Bones is a 2002 novel by American writer Alice Sebold. It is the story of a teenage girl who, after being raped and murdered, watches from her personal Heaven as her family and friends struggle to move on with their lives while she comes to terms with her own death. The novel received critical praise and became an instant bestseller. A film adaptation, directed by Peter Jackson, who personally purchased the rights, was released in 2009. The novel was also later adapted as a play of the same name, which premiered in England in 2018.
To Sir, with Love II is a 1996 American television film directed by Peter Bogdanovich. A sequel to the 1967 British film To Sir, with Love, it stars Sidney Poitier reprising the role of Mark Thackeray. The film premiered on April 7, 1996 on CBS. Like the first film, it deals with social issues in an inner city school.
Fred D'Aguiar is a British-Guyanese poet, novelist, and playwright of Portuguese descent. He is currently Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
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Jan Rynveld Carew was a Guyana-born novelist, playwright, poet and educator, who lived at various times in The Netherlands, Mexico, the UK, France, Spain, Ghana, Jamaica, Canada and the United States.
Peter "Lauchmonen" Kempadoo was a writer and broadcaster from Guyana. He also worked as a development worker in the Caribbean, Africa and Asia. He moved in 1953 to the UK, where he built a career in print journalism as well as radio and television broadcasting, and published two novels, Guiana Boy in 1960 — the first novel by a Guyanese of Indian descent — and Old Thom's Harvest in 1965, before returning to Guyana in 1970. He died in London, aged 92.
Michael Arthur Gilkes was a Caribbean literary critic, dramatist, poet, filmmaker and university lecturer. He was involved in theatre for more than 40 years, as a director, actor and playwright, winning the Guyana Prize for Drama in 1992 and 2006, as well as the Guyana Prize for Best Book of Poetry in 2002. He was also respected for his insight into and writings on the work of Wilson Harris.
Beryl Agatha Gilroy was a Guyanese educator, novelist, ethno-psychotherapist, and poet. The Guardian described her as "one of Britain's most significant post-war Caribbean migrants." She emigrated to London in 1951 as part of the Windrush generation to attend the University of London, then spend decades teaching, writing, and improving education. She worked primarily with Black women and children as a psychotherapist and her children's books are lauded as some of the first representations of Black London. She is perhaps best known as the first Black head teacher in London.
Sir Rodric Quentin Braithwaite, is a retired British diplomat and an author.
Victoria Park Collegiate Institute ; formerly Victoria Park Secondary School, is a collegiate institute in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located south of York Mills Road and west of Victoria Park Ave. in the district of North York. It is the first publicly funded school in Ontario to host the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme. Authorized to offer the IB Diploma Programme since July 1987, the programme is taught in English. The school is open to male and female students. Some feeder schools include Milne Valley Middle School and Donview Middle School. The student population of Victoria Park Collegiate Institute is diverse, with a component of English as Second Language students.
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Whether or not Birbalsingh is another E. R. Braithwaite, her deliberate echoing of his memoir about teaching in the East End, To Sir with Love, tells us something: not much has changed since 1959. Despite the abolition of the 11+ exam and the introduction of the comprehensive system in the 1970s, schools still overwhelmingly fail working-class children.