Talk:To Sir, with Love

Old deleted stuff in the history
There is some old deleted stuff in the history that could do with merging here. Cutler 13:56, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Poitier's character "African American"?
Is it correct to refer to Sidney Poitier's character as "African American"? In the film he states that he's from British Guyana, so the question is whether "African American" applies to persons from South America. The Wikipedia article for African American defines the term as "an ethnic group in the United States of America whose dominant ancestry is from Sub-Saharan West Africa" and says that "The term African-American refers only to American citizens...."

The link to the actor Christian Roberts takes you to a bio of a football player who was born in 1979. This movie is from 1966, so this is obviously an error.


 * I've removed the link to Christian Roberts, for reason stated above. The correct Christian Roberts was a member of the Roberts family which owned Job's Dairy in the UK - and indeed a director of that company for a while - and is the uncle of "historian"/commentator Andrew Roberts. He has his own webite at http://web.mac.com/christianroberts/www.lonelyxstar.co.uk/Welcome.html but I'm not skilled enough at editing to do anything with this info. Sitush (talk) 03:38, 9 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Being from British Guiana Poitier's character was a British subject, the same as all the pupils he was teaching. In other words, he was as 'British' as they were. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.173.13 (talk) 19:44, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Split the film from the book
I am a university student and I see no reason why the film and book should be incorporated together. I don't want to arbitrarily split and get myself banned so any suggestions?206.26.199.146 00:32, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
 * You will not get banned for splitting it. However it is best to know what you are doing. I have lately split a film from a novel, and not knowing much about the process, ended up frustrating some people. The reason was that the novel part had too little to say, on its own. If either the film or the book do not have enough material to stand on their own, usually they are not split. Look at examples: Being There, Meetings with Remarkable Men. If you, or another user you are in contact with, have enough material to make the weaker part into a class "start" article (see here), then split them after having worked on the weak side. If it is an article with a lot of edits lately, better make sure you get consensus on splitting. For technical details here are some useful places to look: Help:Moving_a_page and How_to_break_up_a_page. Also the new article should be "To Sir, with Love (novel)" (not book). I have this article in watch, so if you have any further questions or suggestions, post them here below and I will answer soon. Hoverfish 06:42, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

A couple of thoughts I had on reading this article:

1. Perhaps I am biased as I read the book long before seeing the film, but it seems to me that a film should be indexed under the book from which it springs, not the other way 'round... that is, whichever medium is the original should come first, if a single article encompasses both.

2. I don't see it mentioned anywhere in the book section that the book itself is at least partly autobiographical - it's just called a novel, which implies more or less pure fiction unless modified by an adjective (historical novel, autobiographical novel, etc.). I don't know to what degree the book is memoir versus any fictional elements, but this certainly deserves some mention. Hierophany 04:28, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I feel that whichever article (book or movie) has more content should be the main article. If the article is not to be split, the links to the Book article should be removed from the content Soumya92 16:30, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

If it is split, would a disambig page be a good idea? There's also a recent Korean horror movie of the same name. (There's no article for it as yet, so it's an entirely theoretical disambig page.  But all the same.)  Shouriki 17:39, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Name?
Well, I can't change the title. It won't allow me. Anyone know how to do that without the ridiculous complexity that I encountered?Guyburns (talk) 02:59, 15 August 2011 (UTC)


 * The official spelling of the movie, according to IMDB, is: To Sir, with Love, the way we have it (despite the way it's spelt on the DVD cover)
 * The spelling of the novel is: To Sir, With Love
 * The spelling of the song is: To Sir With Love (no comma)


 * Most ridiculous inconsistency I've ever seen, but that seems to be the way it is. --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  20:51, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

'Pupils' not 'students'
The correct term in the UK for primary school/secondary school children (4-16) is 'pupils' not 'students'. In the UK, a student is a young person over 16 who goes on to further education at either a college or university. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.159.128.106 (talk) 15:17, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Boys called “Mister”?
The article (Plot) states that under Thackeray’s new approach, “Boys will be addressed as 'Mister' and their last names.” This is incorrect. They were to be called by the last names only. There was no mention or use of “Mister” for the boys in the film. This was in accord with British usage of the time. Ptilinopus (talk) 11:53, 28 February 2021 (UTC)