Dead Poets Society and Philosophies of Education Explained

Introduction: Keating as an Unconventional Educator

John Keating is, if nothing else, an original thinker and teacher in Dead Poets Society. The film does not bother to hide this fact even in its opening sequences: Keating is shown as fundamentally different from the other teachers, a distinction conveyed even through his grimaces and visible discomfort with the school's rigid atmosphere.

Keating and Locke: Virtue, Knowledge, and Freedom

John Locke wrote of education, "Virtue is harder to be got than knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered." Keating believes in this Lockean principle, but only to a certain degree. In his classroom, Keating stresses virtue: he teaches his students how to live, feel, and treat one another as much as he teaches them the classics. In fact, he deliberately skips theoretical critical works — even having his students dramatically rip out the pages of a methodical, unfeeling treatise on how to understand and appreciate poetry — in favor of poetry that makes his students feel and interact with one another.

The goal in Keating's lessons is virtue: he wants to teach his students the virtue of education and the virtue of learning itself. Before his arrival on campus, the students studied only for grades, as evidenced by their elaborate study groups in every subject. After Keating's arrival, they begin to study for the virtue of education.

Of course, Keating strays from Locke's path in one deliberate and critical way: he believes that knowledge of the world is just as valuable as the virtue of education. Both in his classroom and during office hours, he encourages one student to stand up to his tyrannical father and, indirectly, encourages another to pursue the girl of his dreams. Keating believes that the virtues of education survive and thrive only alongside genuine knowledge of the world.

The school in which Keating teaches, however, is not at all Lockean in its belief structure. The school values book-learning exclusively and pays no attention to virtue. It espouses texts that drain the excitement from learning and replaces primary texts with secondary criticism. The school stresses memorization rather than any felt sense of literature or the virtues associated with learning for learning's sake.

One of Locke's most prominent themes was freedom, and the school looks askance at freedom. It makes a serious point of putting Keating in his place for his unorthodox — and free — teaching style, while continuing to place enormous importance on memorization and rote learning. Freedom in curriculum and syllabus is conspicuously absent: when Keating is replaced, the substitute teacher immediately returns to the rote secondary criticism text that dictates to students how they should appreciate poetry.

Freedom is also absent in one student's relationship with his father, and that dynamic is a microcosm of the school's broader structure. The students who attend are treated as privileged and blessed simply by virtue of their enrollment; it is their boon to be in this school, and as a consequence they must sacrifice their Lockean freedoms. Indeed, the students do not even understand the meanings of freedom and virtue until their first day in Keating's class. They are visibly skeptical when he leads them outside for a lesson rather than keeping them within the confining walls of the classroom.

Keating and Dewey: Hands-On and Collaborative Learning

John Dewey held extremely innovative philosophies of education. He believed that learning was an active and collaborative process, and that conventional schooling was a wastefully long, confining, and counterproductive endeavor. Dewey's theory was that students come to school to do things and live in a community that provides real, guided experiences, thereby fostering their ability to contribute meaningfully to society. He believed that students should engage with real-life tasks and challenges rather than simple book learning.

Accordingly, Keating is a thoroughly Deweyan teacher. He believes, for instance, that each student should invent his own unique and innovative walk; he does not believe that long years spent memorizing poetry or critical commentary are productive in any form. Keating wants his students to write on their own, and he even challenges one student until he produces a genuinely "felt" piece of poetry. He wants students to learn the process of creating, not merely to learn how the great poets created, as presented in long and dreary textbooks that, in his view, do nothing to structure students' lives in a positive way.

Keating encourages the Dead Poets Society, which is the ultimate example of learning by doing as opposed to passive absorbing. By subtly guiding his students toward forming the society, he teaches them to feel literature and infuse their own emotions into it. He also encourages them to draw connections between poetry and their own lives. Keating truly believes, as Dewey did, that collaborative and less conventional education helps students learn from a practical, life-centered perspective and encourages them to return that knowledge to their communities through their own actions and interactions.

Conclusion: Progressive Philosophy vs. Institutional Tradition

Keating draws his teaching philosophies from the most progressive — and indeed the best — that Western philosophy of education has to offer. The school, on the other hand, is quite literally stuck in the past, as underscored by the Druidic imagery present in its functions and commencement ceremonies. Keating brings the fresh thinking of Locke, Greene, and Dewey into his classroom, while the school does its utmost to subvert those very teaching methods and philosophies of education.