I abhorred Dead Poet’s Society. There are many things to hate about the film: the disgusting mishandling of one of the film’s only female characters, the maudlin tone and the romanticizing of violence, and the complete lack of diversity in a film which intends to celebrate resistance to conformity, and presumably the diversity of viewpoints which would accompany it.

However, I’d like to speak about what I found most infuriating about the film: it’s celebration of Mr. Keating’s “unconventional” teaching methods. The film presents Mr. Keating as a uniquely inspirational teacher, beloved by his students. I imagine I am not alone, however, in feeling that I would have hated having Mr. Keating as a teacher. Watching the film gave me flashbacks to every high school humanities class I hated with every fiber of my being, every class which made me want to become an engineer. When Keating has the students rip out the introduction of their poetry books, he seems to be suggesting that real literary criticism isn’t important. The class is not going to analyze poetry for its meter, rhyme scheme, and symbolism– they’re going to figure out what poems make them feel. What comes out here is a weirdly anti-intellectual theme for a film which seems to think it is celebrating literature.

One of my high school English teachers, in introducing our unit of poetry, told us that there are wrong answers. There is a correct way to interpret poetry, and there is an incorrect way. That seems like exactly the kind of sentiment Mr. Keating would hate. His general message seems to be that you should find what poetry means to you personally. While that thought seems seductive at first, upon closer inspection, it seems preclude any possibility of real dialogue about what poetry means, or real criticism of an author’s technique or intent. Mr. Keating has essentially taught his students how to feel, at the expense of teaching them how to think. He is exactly the sort of teacher I would have loathed. I attend school to learn how to think, not to be taught how to feel. I can manage the latter on my own.

I should also mention that, given our current political climate, it’s not super fun to watch a high school teacher essentially tell his students that the truth is whatever you feel is true. Also that you should  “carpe diem”, which the boys in Dead Poets Society seem to interpret as “Do whatever you want, irrespective of the rights of others.”