Now here is a movie about education or based in a school that stands firmly on its own as a film. There is so much to praise and discuss with Dead Poets Society that I will not be covering in this post. I’ll be focusing on what comes to mind in terms of how Mr. Keating and his students interact as a community of learners.
It’s so wonderful to see a movie dedicated to the full-throated support of the humanities, specifically poetry. It is earnest in its argument for making the examined life worth living. There is a catch, though. All students deserve this caliber of education. Yet, the opening convocation features the headmaster telling the students and their families that “75 percent” of the young men who attend Welton will eventually enroll in an Ivy League institution. That’s remarkable and is also a reminder that this is fiction. The implication is that the curriculum is so robust that these boys cannot fail. Less evident is whether this elite prep school is the kind of place where the old-monied or legacy-admitted may send their kids in the first place. Getting to the why behind that statement could make for an equally interesting, but also much less inspiring, film. A deeply cynical look at the kind of students and families involved in the Varsity Blues scandal could be a modern take on that idea.
Robin Williams as John Keating is magnetic and magnificent. I have had teachers whose unorthodox methods must have been inspired by Keating’s approach. As a viewer, it’s easy to be taken in by the gimmicks he uses and then draw the conclusion that all teaching should be like that. Jumping off desks, marching through the courtyard, tearing pages from textbooks, inspiring clandestine poetry recitals… these are not pedagogical models just because of their shape. Keating has an evident, deep love for the written word and observation. He’s also seen enough of the world to know what these boys haven’t, and he knows how to play with that gap in their experience constructively. It’s certainly dramatic and attention getting to ask students to climb on their desks to get a new view of the world, or to offer a muscular repudiation of staid interpretations of poetry. The motions themselves are incidental, even though they make for exciting on-screen action.
The film’s iconic final scene reveals that it wasn’t the mere appreciation of poetry that he was teaching. He was showing the way for these 17-year-olds to avoid the narrow, gilded path their parents and society forced them down. To have these genteel, patrician sons understand that there is a life outside of being a banker, lawyer, or doctor is a huge undertaking. Keating opens their eyes to the idea that there is a conflict between conformity and integrity that they have to resolve. He never tells them to take "the path less traveled by" but that they should know it exists and make an informed choice about where to go.
Neil Perry’s pathetic complaint “can’t I even enjoy it for a little while?” is revelatory in this regard. He says these words in response to his roommate’s quick emphasis on the logistics involved in concealing his participation in a local performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In this scene, Anderson doesn’t see the point in Neil honoring his own interest in acting; all he can consider is how pissed Perry’s old man will be when he finds out. Perry is rightfully upset with Anderson’s response because he did not need another reminder of how constrained his choices are. It’s always on his mind. Keating showed him a looser way of looking at the world and it’s not the way he thought it had been. Perry is unable to escape the conformity and authority of his father’s dreams.
Anderson and the others who stand for their captain in the final scene do so not because they love poetry or the written word or because they hate their replacement teacher. Those who move do so because they know there is a world out there larger than the one they’ve known until this point. They are acknowledging the lesson of needing a different view on the world that Keating had taught them earlier. They love him for how he opened their minds.
Although there are boys of various ages at Welton, it’s not clear whether Keating or the other teachers are responsible for all grade levels with their subject. We never see Keating teaching other classes nor is there evidence of younger students having reading, writing, literature, or English classes. This situation raises the question of whether Keating has only one prep. If so, then that is one hell of a position. What little we know of his life outside the classroom is that he has a love interest who is in London and that he has taught similar courses in England before coming to Welton. It would be nice to know whether he has only this one class because that information could explain his teaching methods. If he has all day to plan, then it makes sense that he would come up with some out of the box ideas and that he would have the patience to adjust them when they do not work the first time. As before, all students (not just those in cloistered academies) deserve teachers who can give this much time and attention to their subject and their students.
It’s worth noting that the only women and girls in the movie have extremely minor roles. The few times we see the students’ parents, their mothers are simply appendages of their fathers. The domineering Mr. Perry has hundreds more words that Mrs. Perry. The boys’ love interests are similarly one-dimensional. The boys have three girls who are peers and they exist solely as subjects of arousal. Even Keating argues that the purpose of language is to “woo women.” If that’s what he has to say about gender roles, I’m terrified of how he would explain the whiteness of Welton. He graduated from the institution, so he may be unable to see its whiteness as problematic. The fish is the last to notice the water and all that. It’s far too generous of an interpretation of the film to think that it does not directly say anything about gender or race because it is attempting to show just how sheltered the lives of these people are.
That’s the one thought that bugs me still about this otherwise extraordinary film. No one text can do everything, so maybe I’m expecting too much of a movie from 1989 to have thoughtful commentary on race and gender in addition to its convincing argument in support of a liberal arts education. The tensions of social class are readily apparent in the characters’ interactions with the local public high schoolers and with Mr. Perry’s repeated comments about the sacrifices he has made to get Neil into Welton. It’s entirely possible that there is nothing interesting to say about the maleness or whiteness of Welton: it is white and masculine because that is its raison d’être. The exclusion is the point.