{"id":3007,"date":"2018-10-29T22:11:25","date_gmt":"2018-10-29T21:11:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=3007"},"modified":"2018-10-29T22:18:00","modified_gmt":"2018-10-29T21:18:00","slug":"50-years-in-50-objects-no-28-educating-rita","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=3007","title":{"rendered":"50 objects for 50 years. No 28. Educating Rita."},"content":{"rendered":"

In the 1980 play (and 1983 film) Educating Rita <\/em>the OU was portrayed as a force not only for education, but for profound personal transformation of the eponymous student, who in turn changes the lives of those around her, including that of her tutor. Following a student from the time she overcomes the difficulty of entry to higher education \u2013 she is literally impeded, as she cannot open the door at the start of the play \u2013 to her final entrance and scene when she is calm and confident about her ability to succeed within the conventional academy, the emphasis was on personal liberation through learning. It positioned the OU as part of a long tradition of motivating forces within tales of women who through their own transformations transform others. Russell\u2019s conventionally structured play echoes the tale (recounted by Ovid in the eighth century CE) of the sculptor Pygmalion, who fell in love with a statue he had carved. It also may have been inspired by the 1912 play by G. B. Shaw and a film, My Fair Lady<\/em>, 1964. Russell did some of his research for the play at the OU and in the film course materials appear and are discussed. \u00a0OU academic Gill Kirkup noted that while the play \u2018purports to show the change in a mature women student who takes an Open University course\u2019 it revealed (if it was \u2018indicative of common beliefs\u2019 about the OU) that the OU\u2019s teaching system \u2018seems to be widely misunderstood\u2019. \u00a0The OU\u2019s pedagogy appeared to mimic that of the one-to-one Oxford college tutorial. Rita gains cultural capital through her trips to the theatre, does not mention watching the OU\u2019s BBC broadcasts and is dismissive of the possibilities of learning through television. Nevertheless, the text was used to illuminate and support the OU\u2019s mission. According to OU staff tutor Paula James, when students studied Pygmalion <\/em>on the level one Arts Foundation course, A103 (which was presented 1998 to 2008), an Educating Liza <\/em>sketch was presented for the arts event evening during the residential school week. ‘So Rita in one version or another has long been part of the OU fabric and culture!’\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To celebrate forty years of the OU, in 2009, real-life Tutor David Heley and OU student Lisa Hubbard played Rita and Frank in a production of Educating Rita presented by the Open University in the South East with Pitchy Breath Theatre. This was part of the celebrations of The Open University\u2019s fortieth birthday. The production toured the UK, playing in theatres, schools, community centres and prisons. In the written programme to accompany it there was information about the OU and links to the website. The Regional Director explained that although \u2018Willy Russell\u2019s play is not a very accurate presentation of Open University tutorials it does capture the excitement of learning with the Open University and the life changing experience which our courses can bring.\u2019 Director and Actor David Heley said of a performance in HMP Swaleside that the audience there was \u2018totally engaged\u2019 and that \u2018many of the prisoners said how they recognised themselves within the play\u2019s action and meaning\u2019.<\/p>\n

In 1983 the play was deployed for marketing by the OU, which produced a flyer to accompany a professional performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Part of an advertisement in the Educating Rita <\/em>programme, Derby Playhouse, 7 September – 8 October 1983<\/strong><\/p>\n

EDUCATING RITA. YOU COULD BE A RITA TOO!<\/strong><\/p>\n

As you watch Rita\u2019s intellect developing throughout the play you might be tempted to ask \u2018Could this really happen in everyday life?\u2019 The answer is \u2018Most definitely yes\u2019 as thousands of adults have proved during the last thirteen years of The Open University. So far more than 57,000 have graduated with a BA degree and very many more have taken single one-year courses. There are no educational qualifications for The Open University, admission is on a rst-come, rst- served basis, and study mainly involves working at home. Of 5,945 students who graduated last year 17 per cent are housewives, 8 per cent are clerical and office staff and 8 per cent are technicians. 9 per cent had left school at 15. Nearly half of the graduates were women.<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

In Educating Rita<\/em>, as the play\u2019s title implies, Rita is both being educated and educating others. Throughout the play there is a debate about the nature of learning and knowledge and the extent to which she is transformed by her own efforts compared to the influence of her tutor, Frank. Initially Rita feels that her mind is \u2018full of junk\u2019 and that a \u2018good clearing out\u2019 is required and that what she learns from Frank \u2018feeds me inside\u2019. She admits that she nearly wrote \u2018Frank knows all the answers\u2019 across her exam paper. In addition, she dismisses as \u2018crap\u2019 Howards End<\/em>, a novel which involves co-operative learning between practical people and intellectuals. She expresses scepticism of the approach favoured by theorist Jean Piaget. She describes how at school the pupils would be having \u2018a great time talkin\u2019 about somethin\u2019 and the next thing [the teachers] wanna do is to turn it into a lesson\u2019.<\/p>\n

As noted here<\/a> perhaps one reason she changes is to fit into the academic world. She alters her accent from Scouse to that which the stage directions call a \u2018peculiar voice\u2019 but is then dismayed that she has become, in her words, a \u2018freak\u2019 and a \u2018half-caste\u2019. Echoing this, Frank refers to himself as Mary Shelley, author of a novel about the creation of a man-made person, Frankenstein. Having assessed the notion of learning as transmission, she then takes control of her own learning and makes only the changes that she requires. In addition, she is able to teach her tutor as well. Just as he asks questions, so does she. Asked why she did not attend a conventional university following her compulsory education she answers with a question: \u2018What? After goin\u2019 to the school I went to?\u2019 Once Frank has suggested to her that \u2018you\u2019ll have a much better understanding of something if you discover it in your own terms\u2019, she claims to have \u2018begun to find me\u2019 and she reverts to her previous name. She changes, but not into a typical student, at Frank\u2019s \u2018Victorian-built university\u2019.<\/p>\n

For her last appearance she does not, as she did before, unpack her notebook and pen. Instead she picks up some scissors and draws on her own skills, which she employs within the learning environment. She starts to cut hair. Neither Delilah nor Sweeney Todd, when Rita returns to hairdressing she wields the scissors in a more knowing fashion than at the beginning. This framing device indicates Rita\u2019s circular route, her return to her roots, offering reassurance that, while learning changes people, the effects are likely to be positive. Rita, by taking flight from the humdrum, paradoxically took the university from where Geoffrey Crowther had placed it in his speech at its foundation, as \u2018disembodied and airborne\u2019, and brought it down to earth. In summarising its activities as \u2018degrees for dishwashers\u2019 Russell\u2019s character domesticated the OU and placed it, reassuringly, if counter-intuitively, in front of the kitchen sink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the 1980 play (and 1983 film) Educating Rita the OU was portrayed as a force not only for education, but for profound personal transformation of the eponymous student, who in turn changes the lives of those around her, including that of her tutor. Following a student from the time she overcomes the difficulty of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[201,166,192,167,122,144],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-50-objects","category-advertising","category-pedagogy","category-promotion","category-students","category-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3007"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3014,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3007\/revisions\/3014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}