01/09/2026
(I wrote this a year ago, but I like it so am sharing again).
We watched Educating Rita again yesterday, for the first time in decades. It touched me deeply.
It set me off, of course, on a rabbit hole of thought about change and transformation.
Rita, or, actually Susan, is a rough diamond: a working class young woman with nonetheless an intensely enquiring mind. The film - the play - hinges on the relationship between her and her Open University tutor, Frank (a flawed, world-weary character as it is, who is rather struck, to say the least, by Rita’s authenticity, rough-and-ready humour, vigour and intelligence).
We see this transformation taking place, with such an important moment in the middle of the play where Rita has the most incredible monologue that she delivers to Frank:
‘I went into the pub an’ they were singin’, all of them singin’ some song they’d learnt from the juke- box. An’ I stood in that pub an’ thought, just what the frig am I trying to do? Why don’t I just pack it in an’ stay with them, an’ join in the singin’?´
She feels out of place in her milieu - what is familiar is not necessarily what defines her any more, and yet she was too afraid and self-conscious to attend a dinner hosted by Frank, her tutor, at his house.
Her dilemma is of course whether to accept her station in life, or to have the courage and tenacity to forge ahead with something that will necessarily change her and, even, affect her relationships…
I think that change and transformation are keenly on our minds as we get older. Many of us can identify with this sense of aspiration - seeing Rita’s non-acceptance of the status quo is powerful, and her defiance of the social trends of the time such as the pressure from both her husband and her father to have a baby (she hides her pill under the floorboards as she knows she needs to find who *she* is first before becoming a mother) is touching.
Much to ponder.
My train of thought then changed to the role of the teacher…that great catalyst of change in society.
Frank believes he has nothing to teach Rita, and yet it is evident that both characters learn much from their relationship - far more than ´just’ English literature, profound and life-changing as that is! The scene at the end where Rita gives Frank the most heartfelt thanks is loaded; there’s a sense of what the pair had to learn being greater even than the romantic relationship it never actually became. Both have affected each other in ways too deep to fathom.
Because teaching is always reciprocal, isn’t it? I very much hope that, when I teach, my students develop in ways that are even greater than the music we are studying (because music is just that: an agent of change, and that’s the catalyst for change in lessons). But I learn from them, too.
And, like Rita, my own desire to learn, to better myself, has always been a hunger that has consumed me. Some people don’t get it. They can’t see why I’m not, at fifty, wanting to slow down, or consider early retirement.
Retirement? I’m just starting!
My hunger to learn from life, from music, and, more beautifully, from the relationships around me, is all-consuming.
Does this resonate?
