Summary «To Sir, With Love»

Summary «To Sir, With Love»

The text is headlined «To Sir, With Love» written by Guinan diplomatist E.R. Braithwaite. It's published in 1959. The text is based on real events describing the experience of working as a teacher at the East End school in London.

At the beginning of the extract the author describes usual Friday morning pre-recess period. Once a week children set down the events of the whole week from his/her view-point own words in weekly review. As for teachers, it is reasonably fair that it helps to know about thoughts of children of them.

A reader can see from this extract that the narrator does not appreciate this weekly assessment very much, feeling both disappointed and relieved. Moreover, the narrator feels upset that his class writes almost nothing about him. The main hero believes that the children imagined him as transient, as was his many predecessors so students don’t take paints to write something about him. In other hand, author unreasonably blames himself for little effort. After that, the narrator tries to be a successful teacher by reading psychology books of teaching but they don't help.

The extract describes three phases relationships between teacher and students. The first is called silent treatment where the students completed all the tasks from the teacher without protest but also did not have any enthusiasm. Even when Braithwaite tried to encourage participation using illustration, his attempts were unsuccessful. The second is called noisy treatment where children tried to interrupt the lesson when the teacher speak or read to them. Children would lift the lid of a desk and let it fall with a loud band knowing teacher could nothing about it so it was enough to destroy the lesson. The third phase of their relationship was revealed by Monica Page's rude remark who let the top of her desk fall with a noise. For the narrator, this was the last straw where he felt sudden burning anger.

One day, repeated attempts to utter disrespect a new teacher lost his temper. The only place where he could be alone for a while was the library, asking himself a lot of questions about not understanding the behavior of children.

To sum up, this story really captures the complex relationship between the teacher and the children. I suppose that this should be read by the younger generation in order to understand and realize how important it is to appreciate the work of other people who are so passionate about their work.