To Sir, With Love

WHEN I taught at Cuvu College in the early ‘70s, (it was not so prestigious at that time and was simply called for what it actually was – Cuvu Secondary School), we took the students to see a movie based on true events called To Sir, With Love.

It is the story of the trials and tribulations of a brilliant black engineer.

With opportunities for black men limited in post– World War II London, Rick Braithwaite, a former Royal Air Force pilot and Cambridge-educated engineer, accepts a teaching position that puts him in charge of a class of angry, unmotivated, bigoted white teenagers whom the system has mostly abandoned.

When his efforts to reach these troubled students are met with threats, suspicion, and derision, Braithwaite takes a radical new approach.

He treats his students as people poised to enter the adult world.

He teaches them to respect themselves and to call him “sir”.

He opens up vistas before them that they never knew existed. And over the course of a remarkable year, he touches the lives of his students in extraordinary ways, even as they in turn, unexpectedly and profoundly, touch his.

To Sir, With Love is a powerfully moving novel that celebrates courage, commitment, and vision, and is the inspiration for the classic film starring Sidney Poitier.

The school is in London’s tough East End where the teacher triumphs over bigotry and ignorance to change the lives of his students forever. Considering all the discipline

problems we are having in our “colleges” in Fiji these days, I think the Ministry of Education should make watching this movie a requirement for all the students and teachers. I am sure they will all benefit greatly from it.

But I close with a caveat — the ministry has so far rejected all my suggestions and they were excellent ones that were adopted and implemented in the school district in the SF Bay Area where my daughters went to school.

Here I believe they have found a resting place in the ministry’s trash can.

ARVIND MANI Nadi