Our day out

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Willy Russell was born in Liverpool in 1947. At school Willy was a failure, which made it harder for him to become a writer. When he left school with one English O’ level he became a hairdresser. After that had found a temporary job stacking boxes in a warehouse. He returned to school and got A’ Level while training to be a teacher. He wrote and produced his first stage play. After 18 months the success of his musical ‘John, Paul, George, Ringo and Bert’ enabled him to write full time resulting in many stage, television and screen plays including ‘Stags and Hens’, ‘One for the road’, ’Educating Rita’, ‘One summer’ and ‘Shirley Valentine’.  The types of pupils that attend the innercity secondary school are children with a poor lifestyle and with unemployment in the family. I think the school is an old building with very little modern resources and broken windows, which is situated near a busy road. The pupils in the progress class are remedial and need a lot of help and are not highly thought of by themselves and by most of the teachers. In Mrs. Kay’s view “rejects since the day they were born”.

             In ‘Our day out’ a class of remedial students go on a trip to a place called Conwy Castle with four teachers, Colin, Susan, Mrs. Kay and Mr. Briggs. They firstly stop off at a pair of shops. A male shopkeeper closes his shop when he sees the children coming towards him. He is prejudiced and thinks because of their appearance and accent that they will steal all his food from his shop. The children are disappointed and angry. The next stop is the zoo. The children are walking through and suddenly start stealing animals. There are mainly guinea pigs, rabbits, chickens and other small things that were stolen. Apart from two people who steal a lamb and a snake! The first person to steal an animal was Carol. She stole a pet because she wanted the chance to take care of something and didn’t mean to cause trouble. Next they stop off at Conwy Castle Reilly and Digga are smoking in a tunnel because they are bored. The children are running around because they are excited and in Mr. Briggs` view “ For some of them it’s the first time they’ve been further than Birkenhead”. They are supposed to be with one of the four teachers. This is an educational purpose of history, and mainly to get the kids out of Liverpool and to let them have a good time. Mr. Briggs and Mrs. Kay argue at the castle Mrs. Kay says, “These children can’t be taught” Mr. Briggs argues and says, “These kids need discipline” The next stop is the beach where whilst the others are playing football Carol goes up onto a cliff. Mr. Briggs comes up and tries to convince her to come down. She doesn’t want to leave because she has seen the beauty of the countryside, she envies the way of life here and realizes where she lives is not very nice. When Mr. Briggs catches Carol his personality changes for a short time. The last stop before home is the fair; here Mr. Briggs is having a good time; his strictness had gone, he didn’t care about keeping things in order and let his hair down.

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            Mrs. Kay is in here early forties; she has grey hair and is of medium build. She is very easy going and knows the best way to treat kids. She likes to join in activities and is friendly with everyone. She appears in the film as a middle-aged woman who isn’t strict and loves children. The kids think she is cool for her age. She has a good style of teaching but one thing is wrong. She says, “Most of them were rejects on the day they were born, Mr. Briggs” this is wrong ...

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