Idealistic engineer-trainee and his experiences in teaching a group of rambunctious white high school students from the slums of London's East End.

Mark Thackeray: [entering classroom and seeing smoke] All you boys, out. Girls stay where you are. Out.
[closes door]
Mark Thackeray: I am sick of your foul language, your crude behavior and your sluttish manner. There are certain things a decent woman keeps private, and only a filthy slut would have done this and those who stood by and encouraged her are just as bad. I don't care who's responsible - you're all to blame. Now, I am going to leave this room for five minutes by which time that disgusting object had better be removed and the windows opened to clear away the stench. If you must play these filthy games, do them in your homes, and not in my classroom!
Mark Thackeray: It seems you know so little, and are so easily amused, I can look forward to a very happy time.
Mark Thackeray: I believe one should fight for what one believes. Provided one is absolutely sure one is absolutely right.
Barbara Pegg: If you want to dance wif me, you bleedin' well ask proper!
Pamela Dare: Sir, would you dance with me tonight?
Mark Thackeray: Of course, but nothing too fast. I'm getting much too old for that sort of thing Miss Dare.
Pamela Dare: We'll make it something special, promise?
Mark Thackeray: Promise.
Pamela Dare: Sir, would you call me Pamela tonight?
Mark Thackeray: Yes... Pamela.
Barbara Pegg: You ever been broke, Sir? Real broke? Skint?
Mark Thackeray: Yup. Many, many, many times.
Ingham: Oh, I don't understand you a bit Sir. I mean, you're a toff, and you ain't.
Mark Thackeray: Huh?
Moira Joseph: Sir, what he means is, blimey, I can't sorta put it into words, or anything, but...
Barbara Pegg: Well, Sir, you're like us, but you ain't, I mean, you're not. It's kinda scary, but nice. You know what I mean, don't you?
Mark Thackeray: Well, I... I don't know how to answer you, except to say that I teach you truths. My truths. Yeah, and it is kinda scary, dealing with the truth. Scary, and dangerous...
Pamela Dare: [reading from her school book] And he had learned to love, I know not why, for this in such as him seemed strange of mood. But thus it was and though in solitude's small part the nipped affections have to grow, in him this glowed when all beside had ceased to glow.
Pamela Dare: Do you two...
[wiggling her hips]
Pamela Dare: Do you two shake?
Mark Thackeray: If you apologize because you are afraid, then you're a child, not a man.
Gillian Blanchard: [talking to Mark about Pamela Dare on the bus] Make no mistake about Pamela... she's a woman in every sense of the word.
Barbara Pegg: Who does he think he is there? Cheeky devil.
Mark Thackeray: Marriage is not for the weak, the selfish, the insecure.
Barbara Pegg: Oooh, look at me! I am a lady, I am!
[sticks out tongue]
Denham: [to Pamela Dare] I know what's bothering you! You fancy him!