Dead Poets Society Research Paper

Ryan Green

CPSY 361

Dr. Macari

June 9, 2018

Dead Poets’ Society

A free thinker in a dictators world. When you hear this the first thing you might think is, well that’s not going to go well. Well in the movie Dead Poets’ Society. That’s exactly what happened. Mr. Keating, a new teacher to the Welton Academy for boys who brings a new unorthodox method of teaching to the school. Who pushes the minds of his students to think outside the ways that the school teaches them to. But is he right? Is his way of teaching effective? Or was it a bad way to teach his students. That’s what this paper is paper is about. The effectiveness of Mr. Keatings style of teaching.

At Welton’s Academy for boys, the school holds a high expectation for its students and

Keating was an effective teacher was because, from the very start, Mr. Keating always encouraged his students to carpe diem or ‘seize the day’ and become who they really were, rather than how society wanted them to be. One person that Mr. Keating’s philosophy really influenced and affected drastically was Neil Perry, as Neil made many life-threatening decisions based on his advice from Mr. Keating. He stood up to what his father had planned for his life and followed his dream of becoming an actor. But in the end, killed himself because his father didn’t approve of his choices and was going to force him to do what he

“Carpe diem, or seize the day,” (Horace) and “ suck the marrow from its bone,”( H.D. Thoreau). It is a good teaching style because it teaches the students to think for their own and to follow their dreams, and to not live the lives that others have set for them. Although it is a good teaching style, he only taught the good sides of the romantic style. He didn’t teach them the bad sides of it or the downsides that could come with it. As Mr. Keating talks about later on after something happens because he didn’t explain. “Suck the marrow from its bone, but don’t choke on the bone,” (H.D. Thoreau). Keating’s romanticism led to his downfall. When Neil asks him about what the Dead Poets’ Society was, he replies that they were romantics – that during the meetings “gods were created, women swooned, and spirits soared.” He also says that he wants to forget those times. Keating took precautions to take a different path in his youth by following his career over the woman in London, whose picture was on his desk. However, by doing this, teaching became his new passion. In his attempt to teach others what he had learned in life about romanticism and how it needed to be controlled, he watched Neil, Nwanda, and Knox enter into extreme romanticism, and that not only led to their downfall, but his as