Description
Here is a selection from what the critics have said about this remarkable book:
Michael Croft, author of Spare the Rod, wrote in the Observer:
‘This is the noblest, most moving, least sentimental, account of life in a modern school and of a teacher’s struggles with his pupils and with himself that I have come across. Set in the East End it deals with familiar problems of indiscipline, illiteracy, overcrowding, delinquency and promiscuity, yet it is in no sense another secondary modern shocker. It is the story of how a young teacher with no training or experience is confronted, as new untrained teachers invariably seem to be, with the toughest class in the school – in this case a bunch of mixed and hardened fifteen-year-olds – and how he gradually imposes upon them his own standards of decency till he finally wins their affection as well as their respect.
Underlying this is a deeper, more subtle theme. Mr Braithwaite is a Negro, born in British Guiana. Although colour prejudice did not preclude him from flying with the R.A.F. during the war, it did afterwards from obtaining the kind of job for which his scientific qualifications fitted him and it took eighteen months of disappointment and humiliation before he stumbled upon teaching as one profession for which a white skin was not a tacit qualification.
Even so, teaching white children required a special kind of courage. . . In the first few weeks he was as defeated as most, stunned by the fierceness of the opposition, shocked by the lewdness with which it was expressed and out of sympathy with children whose circumstances, however depressing, were at least more privileged than his own. But he fought back with an obstinacy and resourcefulness which should serve as a model to anyone entering the profession . . . I hope his book will be read as widely outside the profession as it will be in it, for it shows a sensitive and obstinate man of extraordinary moral courage overcoming vital human problems which have defeated many of us, but which in some degree concern us all.’
Times Educational Supplement:
‘The author brings out the essential warmth of East End life. His portraits are sharply drawn and his love for the young people in his care is unmistakeable.’
New Statesman:
‘An intelligent and unusual study both of some of our toughest educational problems and of our own peculiar brand of racial prejudice.’
Daily Telegraph:
‘Among so many pomposities offer nowadays as cures for the “teddy-boy problem”, this moving book shines like a good deed in a platitudinous world.’
New Commonwealth:
‘A book of hope . . . should be required reading for all interested in racial relations throughout the Commonwealth.’
Hardcover, 188 pages. In very good pre-loved condition with the exception of being ex-library and a tear to the plastic cover over the dustcover.
