E.R. Braithwaite was born in 1912 in British Guyana. After the war colour prejudice precluded him from obtaining the kind of job for which his scientific qualifications fitted him, so he decided to work as a school teacher. In 1959 Braithwaite won the Ainsfield Wolff Literary Award for To Sir, with Love, a book about his experiences as a teacher in a school in London's East End. He also is an author of such books as A Kind of Homecoming (1961), Paid Servant (1962), A Choice of Straws (1965), and Reluctant Neighbours (1972). His writings primarily deal with the difficulties of being an educated black man, a black social worker, a black teacher, and simply a human being in inhumane circumstances.

The extract under analysis, Chapter 8 of the book To Sir, with Love, is about a black man, as well, who begins teaching at a reform school in London's East End. Once a week the whole school writes a review, where they can put anything about their school and teacher. The narrator feels upset that his class writes almost nothing about him. He tries to be a better teacher, makes any effort to do so, but everything is in vain. One day a girl swears in front of him, and he is so angry that he goes upstairs and asks himself why they are like that.

There are not so many characters in here. If fact, we have only the narrator — a new black teacher, who does all his best to make his pupils pay attention, and the children — noisy, irritating and uninterested in studying. The characters are believable, and the whole story makes us feel sympathy towards the narrator.

In the chapter the author raises a problem of the students' attitude towards their teacher, especially if he is a black one.

The text is written in the first person, from the point of view of the teacher himself. The narration is rather simple and unemotional.

The extract can be logically divided into three parts: the introduction (let us call it Weekly Review), the development of the plot (How the Narrator Tries to Be a Good Teacher), and the climax (The Pupils Make him Mad). There is no outcome of the story, because at the end of it the narrator is still puzzled and cannot come to the answer why his pupils behave like that.

So, what about the exposition? From the very beginning of the chapter the author lets us see a Friday morning in the class, where everybody writes a review. The narrator describes this technique as "pet scheme", which is introduced by the headmaster for two reasons: first, "that must in some way improve his (a pupil's) written English", and second, the teachers "soon get a pretty good idea what the children think of us". The whole headmaster's speech is represented in one large paragraph.

Then goes the second part, an account of events. The narrator finds this "pet scheme" pretty useful for himself. He wants to know, what his pupils think about their new teacher. However, it turns out that they have only noticed that he is black, and that is it ("...apart from mentioning that they had a new "blackie" teacher, very little attention was given to me"). After that he begins to make any effort to become a better teacher for them. He constantly makes plans for classes, reads "books on the psychology of teaching", uses illustrations "from the familiar things in their own background", but they still show no enthusiasm. Then comes "'noisy' treatment", how the narrator describes it. The pupils begin to interrupt the lesson, make irritating noises and so on. The narrator feels "angry and frustrated".

In this part the author uses different stylistic devices. For example, there is an idiom "to cut a figure", which means "to create an image", and "to take great pains", which means "to make a great effort". He also uses a lot of descriptive adjectives, which help to convey the mood of the story: "remote" and "uninterested" about pupils, who paid no attention for the narrator's efforts, and "angry" and "frustrated" about the narrator. Besides, we can see a simile: "...sit and stare at me with the same careful patient attention a birdwatcher devotes to the rare feathered visitor", which is used to make the statement more emphatic.

Finally, we see the climax of the story. One morning the narrator reads some poetry to the pupils, and one girl lets "the top of the desk fall", that creates much noise (here the author uses a hyperbole — "the noise seemed to reverberate in every part of my being"), then she swears, and the narrator is so insulted that he goes in the library, as he describes, "the only place where I can be alone for a little while". He feels sick, because he thinks that by this act they intended "to display their utter disrespect" for him. At the end of the extract the narrator asks himself, "Why, oh why did they behave like that?" The repetition of the word "why" makes his question more emphatic. This entire situation, shown close-up, with such a variety of details, makes us understand that the narrator is a very emotional person, who really wants to reach a mutual understanding between him and his pupils and who takes everything to his heart.

This story precisely displays the relationship between a teacher and his pupils. I am sure, it should be read by all the children and young people to make them realize, how they treat their teachers in spite of all the efforts they make to educate them. And then, probably, they will reach the mutual understanding.