Period Piece

Quentin Letts, columnist and theatre critic for the Daily Mail, makes a very good point in his review of the latest production of Willy Russell's comedy Educating Rita, which has just opened at London's Trafalgar Studio. The 1980 play (subsequently made into a successful film, pictured) centres around the desire of a working class hairdresser to gain a proper education, and the efforts of an over-the-hill English professor to help her achieve her best.

Remarks Letts:

'When Mr Russell wrote this admirable play it was not only credible that a working-class woman would be a rarity at university. It was also still the norm for the education sustem to demand high standards. A don barking at less privileged students and demanding that they stretch themselves? Well yes, it would have happened then. That, after all, is how you create a deserving, wider elite.

I'm afraid British universities, like the secondary schools feeding them, have become so paralysed by theories of equal access and social engineering that todays Ritas are unlikely to acquire the right properly to call themselves elite.

They will instead be patronised and given a module which will be easier and will represent 50% of their final mark..'

Changed circumstances have rendered Russell's play an anachronism in just thirty years. Lett's could have added that Rita's very desire to be among the best - her aspiration to better herself by acquiring knowledge and understanding - has itself become a thing of the past. The sight of it still moves us, but in our resolutely downwardly-aspirational era, it evokes more just a little nostalgia.

The NCF will be returning to this topic in October, when we will be holding a panel discussion on elitism and anti-elitism. Details will be posted here.

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