The modern student would hate John Keating.
It has never wounded me more than to write these very words. And yes, this is far from an absolute statement. A great many young people—maybe even most—would still find John Keating as inspirational, exhilarating, and edifying as I found him to be the first time I watched Dead Poet’s Society as a teenager.
But the trendlines in our schools and in our culture do not favor teachers of John Keating’s ilk. Let me explain.
Robin Williams’s portrayal of a fictional teacher at a stuffy, New England 1950’s prep school inspired an entire generation of young people to be teachers—myself included. Keating was the archetype of the “teacher who can change your life,” a teacher who understood that learning and life are intimately intertwined, who taught his students that a serious life requires serious reading of serious texts about the many varieties of life’s bottomless reservoir of possibilities. Most importantly, he taught that the truest measure of a man or woman is not what they say, but how their actions correspond to their deepest held convictions.
John Keating was dramatic, jumping on desks, quoting canonical literature at will, in Latin no less, taking mysterious walks to gaze at pictures of long dead students of the school.
John Keating was an unabashed romantic of the classroom. He let his students know that the classroom anchored his essential self, it centered his universe, it gave his own life structure and meaning.
John Keating didn’t have high expectations—he had towering expectations. When a timid student, Todd Anderson, fails to complete a class assignment of writing a poem, Keating takes it upon himself to physically haul Anderson in front of the classroom, closes his eyes, and forces him to dig deep into the inner recesses of his psyche, ultimately revealing the beautiful lyricism of his teenage soul. The moment is soulful, moving, and expressive of education as a transformative event in the human journey towards self-knowledge.
Sadly, none of this would play very well for a great many of our modern students.
The modern teen would find Keating’s unbridled enthusiasm and passion utterly off -putting, maybe even a little bit phony. Increasingly, teens of today find irony exultant and more cerebral than unabashed authenticity. Sarcasm ranks a close second in the realm of what’s laudatory and respectable in teachers. Irony and sarcasm have the advantage of deflating the stakes of the classroom, relaxing the atmosphere in a way that allows students to decide for themselves whether a subject is worthy of their passion and investment. Students prefer cool detachment in their teachers, not a fiery attachment to the subject at hand. The ethos of the hipster, after all, is one of detached disdain for tradition, a “sissification of authority” as a friend of mine has described it.
Moreover, our students have grown up in an era of high stakes testing where “accountability” drives the structure, tone, and texture of the entire learning experience. Is it any wonder that the tenor of a great many students is one of cold utilitarianism? The movie never shows John Keating giving a test or grading essays. Why would it? The essence of Keating’s teaching philosophy is that education is not tantamount to job training. Education is aspirational, it is transformative, it is about changing the inner constitution of one’s soul in the hopes of inspiring a human being to live a life of principled meaning. “Seizing the day” is not a reflexive and drab credo of work place efficiency, it is a process of using life to explore the great states of being, from love and friendship, to wisdom and justice.
To the test taking maestros sitting in our classrooms, a teacher who romanticizes and exalts the subject is merely standing in the way of the finish line, wasting time with verbal bravado or highfalutin jabberwocky that won’t help them get into college or land a six-figure salary one day.
But most offensive to the sensibilities of the modern teen is Keating’s triumphant knowledge of life’s possibilities and hidden meanings. There is never the slightest hint that John Keating is their equal. Their footing is the opposite of egalitarian. Keating knows. He has read. He has lived. He has felt mighty emotions and considered what Dostoevsky called “the eternal questions.” The students have not. For Keating, the classroom is where a young person begins the most consequential of human journeys, the sojourn of finding and crafting a serious self in light of momentous literature and poetry.
In a word, Keating was never a “friend.” He was never their equal. He was friendly, charming, and a lightning bolt of genuine inspiration. But he never conflated “understanding” his students with the primary objective of challenging and educating them. He wanted his students to be uncomfortable sometimes, to feel the electrification of a teacher’s passion in such a way that it cannot be ignored, marginalized, or given the proverbial teenage shrug. And yes, most of his students were troubled, not by the modern hurdles of poverty or racism, but by the tyrannical expectations of cold and distant parents. Yet his sympathy for their traumas never replaced the ambitious project of educating his students.
Our students live much of their lives consuming the frivolous datum of social media, a cocooned world where they decide who to engage, what article to like or read, and ultimately do so within the safe and unchallenging confines of their own familial ecosystems. Teachers of John Keating’s type want students to put down their phones, know what they do not know, assume a Socratic posture of humility, and acknowledge that a teacher’s job is not to befriend you, it is to improve you.
The modern rejection of John Keating is a tragedy; it is further evidence that our culture has forgotten that teachers are not there to keep boredom at bay for overstimulated teenagers or to administer standardized tests. They are there to cultivate and ameliorate the mind and character of their students. There is nothing ironic or sarcastic about the professionalism of Keating-esque teachers.
They take their jobs seriously. Some students might sneer or be smug in the face of their intensity, but these children would be the worse for it. We all would.