Preview

Braithwaite's To Sir, With Love: Author's Preoccupation with the Moral Self

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
316 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Braithwaite's To Sir, With Love: Author's Preoccupation with the Moral Self
I would like to speak about the extract of the book «To sir ,with love» by well-known writer Edward Ricardo Braithwaite.
He 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 1912 in Georgetown, Guyana. Braithwaite had a privileged beginning in life: both of his parents went to Oxford University and he describes growing up with education, achievement, and parental pride surrounding him. He attended Queen's College, Guyana and then the City College of New York. 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 was based on his experiences there. His version of events at the school is contested by a former pupil, in Alfred Gardner's autobiography An East End Story. While writing his book about the school, Braithwaite turned to social work and it became his job to find foster homes for non-white children for the London County Council. His experiences resulted in his second novel Paid Servant.
Braithwaite's numerous writings have primarily dealt with the difficulties of being an educated black man, a black social worker, a black teacher, and simply a human being in inhumane circumstances. His best known book, To Sir, With Love, was made into a film of the same name starring Sidney Poitier. Also are known such novels: «Paid Servant» and «Choice of Straws.
The problem addressed in the story is actual nowadays. It is children’s misbehaviour, their unwillingness to study. It examines the growth of the relationship between student and teacher through personal understanding of each other, which is the inspirational foundation of their education. The story reflects the author's preoccupation with the moral

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Race has been a word that is associated with many thoughts, words, and emotions for thousands of years. Throughout history, people have judged and mistreated just because they were born in the wrong race. Being under discrimination, there were many writers who struggled for the racial movement and gained many valuable results such as Martin Luther King Jr. (Letter from Birmingham Jail), James Balwin (Stranger in the village) and so forth. Brent Staples was one of them with Growing up in Black and White which won the Anisfield-Wolff Book Award in 1995. Beside that, "Black Men and Public Space" was also his interesting work with numerous rhetorical uses adding more effects in describing his experience on more than one occasion in his life: being perceived as a criminal simply based on his "unwieldy inheritance", the color of his skin.…

    • 878 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A young African American male born on a large Virginia plantation to a mother who was the cook for the “Big House” and to a father who historians know little of. In the field, he carried the water to the slaves, carried the corn to the mill and carried the books that he longed to read for the slave master’s daughter. After he and his family were freed as slaves, they then moved to West Virginia. He first became intrigued with education when he saw a group gathered around listening to a man who was reading a newspaper. His mom was thrilled about his excitement for education which led her to buy him his first book, Webster’s Blue-Black Speller.…

    • 965 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    EVID: In “A Knight’s Tale,” William Thatcher talked to his love with more discipline and manners.…

    • 400 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Papers

    • 561 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Writer, Toni Case Bambara, in his short story, “The Lesson” explains and refers the norm in which Bambara accredits to a group of kids who have been exposed to a number of social, economic, and political issues. Sylvia and the rest of the group of kids are not aware of the significant but negative impact that these factors will have on their lives if they do not realize what kind of system they are living and depending upon. Based on some bad ramifications on the personal and social department regarding kids in their societies, all these factors can be effective. Being set aside, the main purpose in the short story is not to take advantage of the opportunities given, but to understand and be grateful for what they have, but also to be determined to thrive for more giving them ambition.…

    • 561 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Black Like Me

    • 314 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The author and main character is John Howard Griffin, He writes about his experience as he travels around southern America after dying his skin black. He tells us how he gets treated as an African American. He wanted to experience firsthand the injustices and hardships black people had to struggle through and their experience of life. As he continues his journey he starts switching back and forth between races and comes to the conclusion that the races don’t understand each other at all and the need to start tolerating each other.…

    • 314 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Web Dubois

    • 3783 Words
    • 16 Pages

    Dubois, W. E. B. (1903). The Souls of Black Folks. Chicago: A. C. McClure & Co.; Cambridge: University Press John Wilson and Son, Cambridge USA.…

    • 3783 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    The most important content in the cultural behavior of the student is the student's behavioral issues with teachers, especially for classroom teachers. Culture behavior is including attitude systems, molds, skills and behavior of individuals in the community relationship with the natural environment, society and themselves, based on social norms to preserve and develop the lives of individuals and communities towards leg, the good, fine. Doing homework is an integral part of learning. Homework is an important part of the necessary additional classroom. It helps reinforce the knowledge learned at school children (or should learn), that knowledge is helping deepen understanding and expand knowledge. Schools enhance the use of the diary of homework, which is the idea of creating a book notes what homework that students are supported to. Lack of respect is the source of not a good thing and the wrong actions. Therefore, the school teaches us to respect everyone around. You respect other people means you respect your fellow human and respect fellow human, it means that you respect yourself, because you are also a number of cells in the same type that you respect others, the qualities, your virtue will also be raised, is raised, is respect, respect for others and express the qualities of a man, and you respect others, of course others will respect you because of the way of thinking, speech, behavior, you are very…

    • 1594 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Book Of Negroes

    • 634 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Lawrence Hill is a Canadian novelist and memoirist. He is best known for the 2001 memoir Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada and then in 2007 his latest and most famous award winning novel The Book of Negroes. The amazing description of the whole story causes one to see the desolate conditions of the slave boats and feel the pain of every person brought into slavery. Anyone would agree with the with The Globe and Mail’s interpretation of this story. Lawrence Hill created an irresistible story that depicts the hard ships, emotional turmoil and bravery when he wrote The Book of Negroes.…

    • 634 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Greenblatt, Stephen, Diedre Shauna Lynch, and Jack Stillinger. Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period. 9th Edition, Volume D. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., Print.…

    • 1270 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Answer Is No

    • 418 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The story was a tragedy which reflects the sadness and unexpected truth. It occurs to me that the poor girl must have suffered tremendously from the disgraceful violation by her tutor. The story somehow created anger inside me because it reveals an undesirable crime which our society does not allow. Indeed, the action of the tutor was a great sin which totally against my belief.…

    • 418 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    TEACHERS' REFLECTIONS ON THEIR ATTITUDE TOWARD STUDENTS Andreja Lavrič, Ph. D. Training centre for civil protection and disaster relief andreja.lavric@guest.arnes.si Abstract In the educational process directed at students, the responsibility for successful learning is divided between the teacher and the students. Both, the teacher as well as the students have to realize their own part of the responsibility burden. The teacher has to be aware that regardless of the fact that he/she invested a lot of effort into providing the students with quality knowledge, the students will not necessarily acquire the offered knowledge; proper conditions must first be created for that. A teacher’s responsibility within the educational process includes expertise in his own teaching approaches as well as his/her educational (rearing) style. There are several different theoretical concepts that provide teachers with plenty of opportunity to assess their own teaching styles (e.g. analytic – holistic, deep – surface, etc). One of the possibilities enabling a teacher to reflect on his/her attitude towards students is a model composed of three categories: demands, awards (praises) and punishments (reprimands). Teachers reflected on their educational (rearing) styles during teachers’ education, where they agreed to the existence of educational components in the educational process; first they assessed themselves, while afterwards also receiving feedback from each other. While making use of all three categories of the presented model, teachers have to be aware that despite their superior position within the social hierarchy, their attitude when communicating with their students should not be superior and critical. They should instead maintain their authority through emphatic communication suitable in a given situation. Keywords: educational model, communication, teacher training…

    • 3866 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Does War Affect Literature

    • 2627 Words
    • 11 Pages

    Cited: Abrams, Meyer H., and Stephen Greenblatt. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York [u.a.: Norton, 2012. Print.…

    • 2627 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Education is important because this would determine the extent of progress of one‘s social and economic well-being. Who would not want to have a diploma in hand and acquire a high wage job in the future? Surely, it‘s neither you nor I. But before obtaining our diploma, our reward, hardships and problems should first be overcome. Such hardships and problems are the main causes why most high school students were unable to graduate and just drop out from school. The occurrence of high school students dropping out from school is not the student‘s fault alone but rather, this goes hand in hand with different environmental and social factors. While it can be said that some students possess less enthusiasm in learning, this does not imply that it is already in his nature of well-being. For why would he possess such attitude if there are no reasons at all? Lack of interest of student to a specific subject matter could be attributed to the educator‘s approach of teaching. The academe must develop a strategy to somehow capture the interest and motivate the students to work hard and earn their diploma .If educators could make the students see the relevance of learning the different concepts in school with their future jobs then more students would persevere thus reducing the percentage of drop outs . Another problem in the learning institution is the need for better teachers. Being a better teacher does not merely center on the mastery of the subject matter but rather, a better teacher possess the sensitivity and the eye for students who needs more support? It is said that teachers are considered as second parents thus, he must be sensitive enough and draw more attention to those students who are struggling. Teachers should understand the students and be more considerate on the student‘s welfare. It is not enough that they provide only the knowledge and all the basics on a certain subject matter because some students need them not only as an educator but also a person whom…

    • 464 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The education system has influenced our attitude in the reality life. In fact, school life occupies a large amount in our life, so that there is a huge affectation to our daily life. Besides, there are two resources to support my point of view which is comparing the movie and the book that I choice to study their meaning reflect to reality life by using “The History Boys” and “3 Idiots”. Both of the theme are talking about the school life and the education system which is bored and conservatism. In the following part, different theme as well as action and thought will be illustrated with Marxism as the theoretical framework.…

    • 1405 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Sexual Relations

    • 1968 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Cited: Damrosch, David et al., eds. The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Volume One. 3rd Edition. Vols. 1A, 1B, 1C. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006. ISBN 0-321-33392-6…

    • 1968 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays