Comparing and Contrasting ‘Teechers’ with ‘Educating Rita’
I am going to compare and contrast ‘Teechers’ by John Godber with ‘Educating Rita by Willy Russell.
I think the most obvious likeness between the two plays is the theme of education. In Teechers the teaching is dreadful both the teacher and children are not motivated to learn. The teachers hate working at the school because the children are so baldly behaved ‘everyone’s trying to get out’ The tragic teaching also applies to Educating Rita where Frank himself describes his teaching as 'appalling but good enough for his appalling students'. The dreary approach to teaching concerns the teachers in both plays and in both plays the boredom is due to being stuck in the same tiresome system for such a long time. In Teechers Mr. Nixon comes along and inspires Gail, Salty and Hobby to take their teaching more seriously and to improve on the teaching at Whitewall. The character Nixon is based on Mr Harrison who is said to have turned the ‘kids’ lives around ‘before Mr Harrison came here, the teachers had given us up for dead… we were average’. This inspiration also happens in Educating Rita, Frank has been teaching students for years and when Rita walks into his office he is taken back by her rawness and her opinions.
Both plays are set inn the 1980s at the time of Margret Thatcher. One of the policies of ‘Thatcherism’ included a huge amount of government money being spent on high accomplished schools this then left the poor schools very poor. It then came apparent that there were chasms between the schools thriving and the schools struggling. This is shown in Teechers by obvious differences described by the children of the schools St Georges and Whitewall ‘in an old drama ...
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...ves the play to do they feel motivated ‘I don’t feel average today, I feel top of the class…thanks to sir.’ In ‘Educating Rita’ she has never been to the theatre and an amateur to her is just brilliant this just shows how at first she is so uneducated and how Frank who is very well educated takes going to the theatre and having had an education for granted.
The plays focuses on ‘the failing educational system’. The young teenagers have no aspirations or targets for leaving school all they want to do is leave, its likely that none of them would stay on for sixth form or get a high income jobs. Rita is the product of a failing system because she goes to the university with no qualifications but after her degree she is more positive about theatre and this is an appealing note to finish on for the audience because Rita is able to move forward a more educated woman.
The book can be used as a metaphor for education as a whole. For example, Kate can represent modern institutions and companies. Due to education inflation and credentialism, all they look at is your educational experience and what knowledge you have. This can be applied to Kate as she originally believed your educational background will represent your success in life. In comparison to this, you have Kate’s family, who can relate to students in society. Kate’s family understands that there is more to life than education and knowledge. The same applies to students, who argue there is more to people than their education and years in
The play focusses on three generations of Women, Nan Dear, Gladys and Dolly and where they felt as though they belonged. Nan Dear knew where she belonged and that was the humpy in the flats with her daughter and granddaughter. Nan Dear knows that she won't be accepted into white society just because she is an Aboriginal and those of a different colour or foreign country weren't accepted. Gladys and Dolly both wanted to be accepted into white society, they wanted to feel as though they belonged there.
John Patrick Shanley creates a movie as a whole I feel was more informative than the play. In the play you have 4 characters Sister Aloysius, Father Flynn, Sister James, and Mrs. Muller. While the movie introduces a few other characters, for instance the children. For me the children made a difference because they for one made me understand what kind of kids Sister James was dealing with. I really thought that being able to see the way Father Flynn interacted with all of the young boys including Donald Muller was really helpful when trying to draw your conclusion of Father Flynn versus when reading it your left to imagine for instance; what some of the kids are like. The way the book sets you up your left leaning to Father Flynn being exactly what Sister Aloysius accuses him to be. We also get to see how sister James interacts with the kids and how Sister Aloysius influences her to change the way she deals with and teaches her class.
The play consisted of five characters: Marty, James, Schultz, Theresa, and Lauren. Marty and James are a couple; they knew each other through a wedding, Theresa is a former actress who ran away from the competitive New York, Schultz is an awkward carpenter who just got divorced, and Lauren is a sixteen year old girl who dreamed of becoming an actress. Marty who is the teacher started the class, but the students participated in the class’s activities
The play is very simplistic and overtly political. It heavily features varying aspects of non-illusory theatre to semaphor Priestley's political message. When reading the play, it is important to remember that the characters are not people but caricatures Priestley employs to manipulate the reader. This combines with the artificiality of the plot to form a completely biased play, from whichever angle one looks at it. However at the time of its publication it was not so outlandish, because it upheld the New Labour government, struggling so hard to bring about its reforms and stay in favour of a people who had suffered many hardships and were now looking to more years of difficulty and discomfort.
The play shows how Eva Smith is a victim of the attitude of society in
...of the characters’ lives as their motivation affects what they do. The play’s overall theme of manipulation for personal gain as well as general control transmits to me clearly that we are not in control, of the events that happen to us. In spite of that revelation we are in control of the way in which we react to the circumstances in our lives. Hence, no human fully grasps the capabilities to control the way we act. We simply allow certain circumstances to overpower us and dictate our actions. Ultimately, I learned that we are our actions and consequently we should acknowledge the accountability that is implied when we act a certain way. Instead of blaming others for the mistakes we make, we should understand that we have the control as much as the power to make our own decisions rather than giving that ability someone else.
due to weak funding in the educational system. Milloy makes the readers wonder why certain schools do not live up to the standards of others in nearby towns. Although a play ground was built for this school, Maurice may never be able to play on it because he must learn how to walk, talk, and eat all over again. People take forgranted the daily rituals of life and if put in the shoes of a parent of this boy, one would realize how tragic this accident was and even the effects the education system has.
From this week's reading assignments, I gathered quite a bit of knowledge in the postmodernist features. In retrospect, I was a bit confused on all the features and point of views with postmodernism vs. postmodernist. The two readings being of Barthelme's "The School" and "The Lady With Dog", by Chekhov. These two works were odd and similar. I identified a feature that I thought would work best for "The School", "There is no such thing as truth." I chose this feature because after all the death these students encountered, in the end the teacher had no real conclusion on where all the deceased had gone. The students feared this conclusion and came up with various "alternate endings" for those that had passed.
The differences of these two plays, gives one a sense that any general idea can be broken into a distinct one and not sway away from its intended idea. This means, a comedy can be made into a tragedy, romance, and other themes, and yet still maintain the purpose of providing laughter to the audience. This shows the development of literature over the years, as many more subcategories result because of the contrasts.
In Act One, Scene One when Rita is first introduced, she’s a hairdresser and part of the working class. Russell introduced Rita as an audacious, ambitious but egoistic character. She isn’t scared to express her opinion, which generally amuses the audience, such as when she describes her opinion on the painting in Frank’s office she interprets it differently to what majority of the population would. The reason for her different interpretation is that she’s not educated to the degree that she would be familiar with that style of painting, this also becomes obvious when Frank and Rita discuss challenging death and disease: Rita refers to a poem that people in her class are more likely to read (later she describes this kind of poetry as ‘the sort of poetry you can understand’ and assumes that Frank won‘t like it as it’s simple and doesn’t have any hidden meanings) when Frank thought she was referring to a more sophisticated poem by Dylan Thomas. Throughout the scene we learn that Rita wants to understand ‘everything’ so she can enjoy things like ballet or opera, and that’s the reason why she enrolled on the course in the first place. She explains that she didn’t believe the University would accept her and the audience can see that she’s scared of what it might mean.
In the beginning of the play, Rita is introduced as a talkative woman who is very capable of expressing her thoughts in a straightforward fashion. Based on Rita’s casual dialect and her lack of discipline, it is clear that she has had limited education prior to this encounter. On the contrary, Frank is a “bona fide lecturer” who is knowledgeable in his field of study. (4) Ironically, Frank is very dissatisfied with his occupation, and the same negligent attitude can be found in Rita’s personality. (16) Their relationship flourishes immediately because of this similarity, establishing a welcoming environment for Rita. The office becomes Rita’s sanctuary as she slowly reveals her lack of confidence. Rita expresses her disbelief when she received her acceptance notice. In Rita’s mind, Open University must be an inferior college and they must have lacked applications this year. (4) For Rita, if it were any other tutor, she would have “packed in” and left. (9) Frank is the reaso...
The theme of the play has to do with the way that life is an endless cycle. You're born, you have some happy times, you have some bad times, and then you die. As the years pass by, everything seems to change. But all in all there is little change. The sun always rises in the early morning, and sets in the evening. The seasons always rotate like they always have. The birds are always chirping. And there is always somebody that has life a little bit worse than your own.
He is a lazy man, bored and frustrated by his life he too does not
It taught me a lot like how a family should be and how a family should not be. The play makes you think wow this can really relate to me as a high school student and athlete. Linda needs to learn to speak her mind no matter what her husband says because people have rights and she should be able to talk about what she thinks is going on with her family. “When Linda converses with her husband it’s almost as if se walking on eggshells and almost that she is taking to a frail eggshell that is her husband’s mental state.” (Source 2). Nothing Linda says to try to help her husband will work because she is someone who gets under her skin and makes it a lot worse to willy but too anyone else she is doing anything in her power to help him much like and other wife would do for their husband. A couple weeks after willy dies after all that the family has been through with him it’s a very sad dad but the family is very mad at him still so it is a very hard position to be in and I know I would never want to be to in the position that this family is in. willy was a very mean and angry person to his family and had a lot of stress going on in his life this is why we need to realize that all he wanted was to make his family happy but it was just something he could not do so he gave up and just took all of his anger out on