In the texts A Lesson Before Dying  and in To Sir With Love, there are common themes, especially that of teachers being nothing but bodies of discipline and authority.   Most of us are taught that teachers represent beacons of hope and purveyors of knowledge.  It seems that most of the best teachers, although difficult to define such a thing, are not provided to the lower-class students.  All too often, underprivileged, working class citizens and students are denied the passionate teachers that those in elite schools are granted with.  To Sir With Love is set during a time in England where  there was an established educational hierarchy.  It was almost impossible for inner city students to get into good schools, or study what was known as “PP & E”; politics, philosophy, and economics, a course of study that was reserved for the children of the elite.  Mark, or “Sir” is the odd one out in a community of disinterested teachers.  The rest of the educators  know that no matter how hard they try, the students won’t change, nor will they be able to ascend their class struggles.  Although this is an inconvenient truth for most, Sir takes it as an opportunity to give the youth something valuable to take away with them.  Even though they won’t be able to change their fates, they will have valuable skills to carry with them throughout their lives.  When the friendly woman in the market says to Mark, “so long as we learn, it doesn’t matter who teaches us, does it?” she highlights the fact that degrees, material gain, and status does not matter, as long as lessons are learned and positive skills are gained.

In A Lesson Before Dying, the useless teacher figure is one that will not be able to bring their students out of their desperate circumstances, no matter how much of an effort is made.  Wiggins says, “I teach what the white folks around here tell me to teach, reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic.  They never told me how to keep a black boy out of a liquor store.”  Despite his prestigious academic background, he is worried that he is doing nothing for his community of students but regurgitate the white education that he has been taught to teach.  Growing up in the deep South, he knows that the chances of his black students being able to swim against the current and defy the limitations of Southern white America, are slim, and wishes to teach them what they really need in order to survive and achieve based on their circumstances.  He knows that degrees, material gain and prestige still will not prepare them for their lives to come, and Mark in To Sir With Love has similar thoughts regarding his underprivileged students.  The teacher figures in both texts are extremely fascinating, and relate to each other deeply.