Educating Rita

1) I believe the reason Frank sees education as a trap, and Rita sees it so differently is because Frank is bored and unhappy with his life. Since education has played such a large role in Franks life he resents it for making him unhappy. Frank does not like the way his students think. He feels that education has made them more like bank vaults than intellectual thinkers, to use Freire's terms. When Frank begins to see Rita starting to regurgitate information the way his other students do, he becomes angry and concerned because he was starting to fall in love with her for the way she was before. Rita had her own unique way of thinking and was very opinionated about the world before her education. Becoming educated changed her by molding her to be like the masses at the college, and at the same time taking away what made her so unique.
2) Frank begins to change as a result of meeting Rita, because I think she makes him feel important. He feels that she is beginning to really learn from him, so he cleans up his act for a small period of time. Once Rita starts to surpass the knoweledge that Frank has given her, however, he becomes angry and goes back to his old ways of drinking and being a bad teacher. He is hurt because he feels like he is not needed any longer. What she had made become alive in him, is now dead again.
3) Rita does not go to the party at Frank's house because she does not feel that she will fit in with this educated crowd, due to her social class. I think this is sort of the turning point in the movie, because Rita not only realizes that she does not fit in with Frank's social class, but she also does not fit in with her own working class husband and family. When she goes to the bar and sees them all singing the same song and not thinking intellecutally about anything she cant bare the difference between them any more and she leaves.
4) The way Rita discusses being a hairdresser and the way Rita discusses herself at the end of the movie differ because of Rita's sense of self pride and achievement. When she was just a hairdresser, Rita felt that something was missing in her life. She didnt feel like her mind was being enriched or challenged. By the time Rita is done with her education, she is able to have the power of choice. Her education gives her this freedom to chose between travel, a number of careers, or going back to her old life. This is something of which she can talk about with pride and a sense of acheivement.