EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF TO SIR WITH LOVE

The movie version of TO SIR WITH LOVE delineates the growth and development of a teacher.
The protagonist takes up the teaching profession not out of any particular liking for the job but
that he cannot get what he aspires for--- an engineering job. As a teacher his work becomes
doubly challenging. His students are mostly the “rejections” of other schools and are something
of a menace to the teachers already employed there. Added to this is his coloured skin. The
staff room atmosphere is also not really conducive for a budding teacher. Not only one of his
seniors is an absolute cynic who thinks of his troublesome students nothing better than
criminals but also doesn’t stop short of making oblique references to his being coloured (that
he will teach his students using “black magic” and that he is a “black sheep” ). Though not
without sympathizers among the teachers, he has, nonetheless, to work out the way with his
students on his own. Initially he starts of in the traditional mode but soon realizes that things
are not working for him. However, he calmly bears with all the insults heaped upon him by the
students. The more he gets into the job, starts analyzing the situation and tries to reads his
students and their reactions he finds out that the resistance that he is facing from his students
has something to do with the way of teaching that is being followed in the school and the
treatment that is being meted out to the students. This realization of his leads to his revisioning
of his outlook on teaching and the incorporation of certain broad measures that would make
sense, as far as learning is concerned, to his students. He does away with books, takes them
away to a museum, and enables them to have first- hand experience on what they find most
boring in their books. He also initiates close interactions with the students in the class. Once the
teacher caters to the emotional and educational needs of the students he finds acceptability
among them. They start believing in him and the task of teaching becomes somewhat easier
even with books. Their manners and their dresses become more regular and attain standards of
decency as expected of school children. However, things were not to be set at rest right there
for they were to take a very nasty turn as one of the students was about to hit a teacher whose
authoritarian ways injured one of his friends very badly. The timely intervention of the
protagonist saved the situation but the students took him on the sides of the enemy. However,
their defiance and their resistance were made good of by applying to their sense of self-
respect. In fact the greatest triumph of the teacher lies in his evoking and bringing out in his
students a very positive sense of self respect. Though he had keen interests in his students and
catered to their needs whether educational or otherwise, he never compromised with his sense
of dignity, the purpose of his mission and his principles. That he was so popular with the
students made the parents rely on him for the unnatural behavior of their wards in the
domestic arena. And he game good in that front too. Not only was he accepted by his students
and some of his not-so-nice colleagues but also by the society as well. Finally he decides to
carry on in his vocation as a teacher though he actually gets an engineering job.