“To be quite honest, Mrs Kay I think we should all be inside looking after them.”
This shows me that Briggs doesn’t trust the kids for more than five minutes on their own he is proved after they go to the zoo when they take all the animals from the children’s zoo.
“I trusted you lot. I trusted you. And this, is the way you repay me.”
His philosophy on education is that he is always right and that all teachers should teach properly and when kid are in the wrong, they should be told and maybe even punished. When Briggs talks to Colin about Mrs Kay you can see that he doesn’t like her philosophy on teaching.
“… I can’t see why she has to set herself up the great champion of the non-academics. Can you?”
I think that he feels that Mrs Kay is not teaching the kids anything and that she is not helping them in later life.
I think that Russell makes us not like Briggs because he doesn’t particularly like the children and that he is some kind of bully towards the kids.
I think that our view on Briggs changes because he starts talking to Carol about her future.
“Carol … you’re talking as if you’ve given up on life already. You sound as though life for you is just ending, instead of beginning.”
He also takes the kids to the fairground which he insisted to Mrs Kay is what they should do to finish off the trip. But, by the end of the play, he is back to his usual self; shirt, tie and scrunching up the photographs so no one could see what he was like on the trip.
Mrs Kay feels very strongly about the kids on the trip because she wants to ensure that everyone on the trip should have a good time everywhere they go.
“”
Her philosophy on teaching is that because the class she is teaching is a ‘progress’ class and that they can’t go anywhere so she is trying to give them a good time and not teach them anything.
“It’s too late for them. Most of them were rejects from the day they were born, Mr Briggs. We’re not going to solve anything today.”
She is saying that the kids aren’t going to do anything with their lives and that she might as well show them a good time.
We are supposed to thing that Mrs Kay is a good character because she looks after and cares about the children in her care. However, she is not helping the kids at all because she isn’t teaching them anything and that will not help them in later life when they leave school.
I feel that Russell wants us to feel sorry for Carol and her situation because she can’t really do anything about when she has got any form of education and that she will probably end up working in a factory. Mrs Kay helps her to think that when she is older she can move out here but she can’t because she will have no money and no education to get a decent paying job.
We do feel hopeful for her at the end because she hopefully will do well at school and that she can move of Liverpool when she is older.
In conclusion Mrs Kay does not believe in traditional teaching methods of discipline and high standards, she is lost to understand the unfairness of a society which puts these children to the back of the queue. She wants the children to least have a good day out, even if they are not going to resolve the struggle of the unequal chance and social injustice.
For many of the children she has perhaps taken on a motherly role, she hold there hands, put her arm round them and cuddles them, which they may not get at home, she possibly feels they need more love and care then education. She also stands by what she believes in and defends her pupils against difficult attitudes based on discrimination. However Mr Briggs is completely the opposite to Mrs Kay, he is strict and intolerant to bad behaviour, he believes in the “old school” way of teaching with systematic views of discipline, standards and uniform, whatever the ability or background of the pupils in the progress class.
