Monday, 5 November 2007
Rita's back!
Rita is back from summer school with a whole new experience under her belt! She has changed a lot from that first shy, insecure student who started to attend lessons with a tutor... She is now living with a friend in her own flat, she now sees life from a totally different perspective and she loves it! This change takes place not only outside, i.e. she wears new clothes, has a new hair style, but also inside: she feels a whole new person and she says so! Frank is happy to see her back: he feels happy about her new look but quite hesitant about her other changes: Rita wants to experience new things together with him, to a point Frank feels threatened as when she insists that he gives up drinking or when she wants to open a window because "a room is like a plant: it needs air..." But what air does Rita refer to? This new air that has changed her completely? The kind of air that will change Frank and will turn him in the man she wants? Even when Frank starts looking for a great poet for her and finds out that Rita has already studied Blake we can perceive a certain frustration in both of them: in Rita because Frank is not offering her those new things she wants to learn; in Frank because he apparently has nothing to offer to Rita... How many times do we have this same feeling as both teachers and students? How many times do we feel that we cannot offer our students more than what we have already offer? I will leave the question open...
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4 comments:
I think you are dead right Andre. I believe that we teachers may feel deep in side that it is our duty to know it all. And of course nobody knows everything in life. I think life is a kind of book and every page we read uncovers part of the unknown . However, we teachers cannot avoid feeling frustrated by the fact that we cannot give our students all the answers to their questions.
Anyway, I love your blog. It is very much like you are.
Let's see, Andrea: to what extent is this "new Rita" that different from the "old one" we'd got to love through Act 1? that one felt life made no sense because she needed to find herself, not just do what others expected her to do, remember? Has this new "Rita" actually found herself? Is she doing things the way she thinks they should be done?
I really enjoyed your reflection on how teachers and students can mutually frustrate each other... I do not think, however, that the problem is a question of knowledge, as Lucía seems to suggest. I believe the challenge for Frank is to find a way to get Rita to do something else herself... And the reason why he gets frustrated is, i believe, this Rita does not seem that much different from the many many students he's been teaching at university for years, an audience that has failed to excite him for long... Why? What is it that Frank would like Rita to do?
Let's keep reading and find out together!
LOL,
Gladys
I believe that this new Rita has not changed much: she's still doing the way others think should be done, she is nowhere near from finding her true self. What is more, this must be what makes Frank feel frustrated, I agree with you!! Rita seemed to be totally different from the students Frank is used to teaching, that is what he really liked about her. Now she's very similar to the rest of Frank's students, she seems unable to think for herself, which annoys Frank...
Love,
Andrea
Yes, Andrea, it's as though what she had come to learn was just a question of appearances, isn't it? And Frank was so eager to share something else! (reminds me of the teacher in "Mona Lisa Smile"!)... Luckily, the story is not over yet! ;-)
Loooots of love,
Gladys
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