What is it that Rita wants to know in Willy Russell’s Educating Rita?

Although Rita knows that intellectual enlightenment is significant, to Rita, education provides much more to her in Willy Russell’s Educating Rita. Rita’s education is not restricted to scholastic learning alone. Rita sees and understands the importance of being well educated, but for Rita, education helps her to overcome her background and break away from the traditional role expected of a woman in the 1970s. Rita has set herself on a course of self-discovery, she has a determination to control her own life and make her own choices. Rita believes it is education that will give her these choices. Rita knows that the value of education goes far beyond simple intellectual enlightenment. Education entirely changes Rita which, affects her life enormously.
Rita’s background has held her back and put her at a disadvantage. There was a great deal of research done in the 1970s to show that middle class children were far more likely to do well at school and to go on to unive...