The work of teaching writing - Joseph Harris 2020
A drama of language
Dead poets and wonder boys
Let me close this chapter by returning closer to home. Earlier I mentioned that Educating Rita (1983) tells a familiar story of the reawakening of a middle-aged tutor, Frank, by a vivacious young student, Rita. But such a précis shortchanges the film and the play by Willy Russell it is based on. Educating Rita stands out among teaching movies for its interest in a student in her own right—rather than simply as a foil for her teacher. It is clearly Rita (Julie Walters) who, desperate to escape the confines of her working-class life, drives the action of this movie, pushing the languid Frank (Michael Caine) to teach her how to think and write about literature. The film discusses Rita’s work as a writer no fewer than six different times, as she gradually learns to write the sort of critical essay needed to pass her exams. Most of these discussions take place in Frank’s office, as he holds and points to the essays Rita has written. That is, the film keeps a consistent focus on the material labor of writing, on the actual production of pages and papers. (As well as on the work of reading them. We are shown Frank several times at his desk marking essays.)
The first essay Rita writes is, according to Frank, “all over the place.” While it was supposed to be on E. M. Forester, it has more to say about Harold Robbins. When Rita protests that “you said to bring in other authors,” Frank replies that “devouring pulp fiction is not being well-read” (19:00). He tells her she will need to become more disciplined and selective. But for a while, things only seem to get worse. Rita’s second paper, in response to a prompt asking “how you would resolve the staging difficulties of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt,” consists of a single sentence: “Do it on the radio” (30:00).
When Frank protests that he might have “expected a considered essay,” Rita explains that she needed to do her work for the course in the hairdresser’s shop, and that was all she had the time to write. Frank sympathizes but insists on more. Rita takes her paper back and walks, with a mock goose-step, over to a table in his office, where she sits down to write while Frank grades other papers. In a few minutes she returns with this mini-essay, which Frank reads aloud:
In attempting to resolve the staging difficulties in a production of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt I would present it on the radio because as Ibsen himself says, he wrote it as a play for voices, never intending it to go on in a theatre. If they had the radio in his day that’s where he would have done it. (0:32)
Rita beams. Frank shrugs and nods. Rita has shown him that she can translate her thoughts into the idiom of the academy and that she can cite evidence from Ibsen himself for her proposed staging of the play.
Of course, this moment of insight comes far too quickly and easily. This is a movie, after all. But what I admire most about Educating Rita is that it uses this deft and comic scene not as a simple epiphany, marking the moment when Rita becomes truly educated, but as the start of a long slog of learning. At her next tutorial, Rita once again has no essay—but this time it is because her husband, angry with what he sees as her betrayal of their life together, has burned it along with her books. This tension—between what Rita hopes to gain through her education and what she must give up to get it—is explored but not resolved throughout the rest of the film. In a moving scene, Rita speaks of her desire to learn how to “sing a better song,” but the film also pokes gentle fun at her fumbling attempts to speak in an Oxbridge accent. Rita learns to give up that affectation but grows more and more adept at writing critical prose. She writes a paper that Frank describes as honest and affecting in its own terms but not appropriate for an exam. Rita throws it into the fire and starts over. Next she composes an essay that Frank tells her “would not look out of place with these,” gesturing toward a stack of papers by full-time students. Rita is thrilled, though Frank appears ambivalent. Finally, the two quarrel when Frank accuses Rita of having abandoned her own voice in her quest to sound more educated. But Rita is educated at this point, as she angrily tells Frank and goes on to prove by passing her exams. The movie ends with Rita and Frank reconciled but traveling in different directions, neither quite sure what they will do next.
What strikes me through all of this is the unusual amount of work we see Rita and Frank do together. We watch Rita writing and revising, Frank commenting and grading, both of them conversing and quarrelling. The sets of the film are littered with books, papers, cigarettes, and coffee cups (which in Frank’s case are usually filled with booze). No desks are leaped upon; no miracles occur. Early on, Frank describes himself as “an appalling teacher, which is fine for my appalling students”—and several scenes that portray him as drunk and supercilious in the classroom confirm this self-assessment. But Rita interests him and he takes her seriously. And so their relationship becomes, to return to Melora Wolff’s phrase, a “drama of language”—that is, a drama of two people working together with texts and ideas.
The dead poets and wonder boys of the movies suggest that to teach writing we need to connect with the students we are working with. Educating Rita shows that doing so is not simply a matter of making friends. Rather, we need to approach and respect students as writers. We need to learn how to value what students have to tell us—indeed, to learn how to imagine them as people who may actually have something to tell us, something we can learn from, who are not merely our apprentices but our interlocutors. In chapter 2, I look at a few ways, some successful and others not, fictional teachers have tried to invite students into the conversations of the academy.