Seize the day! Make your lives extraordinary.” This idea of carpe dium is central to the message of the movie and a key part of romanticism. One of the first things Mr. Keating tells the students is to call him “Oh Captain, my Captain,” which comes as a shock to the students who are told by strict orders by all other teachers to refer to them formally. He teaches the boys to think for themselves, a lesson looked down upon at the elite academy directed towards developing their minds through learning out of textbooks. Mr. Keating then has the boys stand on their desks to teach them how they can see the world in a different way.
The movie Dead Poets Society follows a group of teens at a strict school who become heavily influenced by the transcendentalist philosophies of their new teacher, Professor John Keating. The values they are taught completely change their entire perspective and attitude towards life. For the most part this is a good thing, as the boys normally lead boring lives that they are bored with. They form a group known as the Dead Poets Society and their lives are immediately changed forever. They live by the philosophies of writers like Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Cathy Pham Mrs. Jaspard AP English Lang/Comp 29 December 2012 Philosophies of Transcendentalism In the movie Dead Poets Society, the philosophies of transcendentalism are explained in depth, though in a more interesting way. Near the beginning of the movie, where several orthodox methods of teaching are shown, tradition was expressed. The typical class introductions, the way the lessons are delivered, and the assigning of homework are all done in a similar fashion. That is, until the boys sat through a class taught by Mr. Keating, Welton’s new English teacher. His unorthodox methods not only taught the boys to think for themselves, but they also awoke the boys’ inner desires and dreams.
“Cult of the Individual”: A Two-Pronged Concept Reading Bruce Pirie’s book, Reshaping High School English has become an exercise in self reflection and frustration at seeing some of my own classroom practices as being shallow. In Chapter two, entitled Beyond Barney and the Cult of the Individual, Pirie asserts that many teachers have become focused on the individual thoughts and feelings of their students to the point that it has become doctrine. While I do not believe teachers should forget that their students are individuals and have unique interests and background, I am compelled to examine my own routines and practices. Perhaps, as Pirie suggests, I am contributing to a generation of narcissistic young people. Classrooms by their very nature are social environments.
The uneasiness the “n-word” creates in class is important because it causes teachers and students to face the word and discuss their feelings about it, which is an important conversation. Ignoring the word or choosing not to read it because it is offensive and people are too uncomfortable to read it gives the word more power. To take away this power, we must acknowledge the word which degrades its offensiveness and helps people deal with it. “The understandable discomfort the word “nigger” causes students and teachers is a part of a conversation; part of the point of reading that book in school is to have
How does the director of the film Dead Poets Society, use cinematic techniques to convey the central ideas? Peter Weir, director of the film Dead Poet's Society, has used several cinematic devices to convey the main themes of the film to the audience. Dead Poets Society follows the lives of a group of boys in the 1950s whose new English teacher shows them the importance of standing up for what they want and seizing the day, instead of conforming to what others think is right. Dialogue, mise en scene and different camera angles have been used by Weir to express the ideas of being an individual and not conforming to what other people are doing, conformity and expressing your individuality and the importance of being your own person. In the scene that introduces each of the teachers at Welton Academy, Weir has used the character Mr Keating to develop the idea of being an individual and not conforming to what other people are doing.
Also the voice over is organised whenever the character Nick is left alone to his thoughts for instance in the opening begins with him waking and going to and into school, and after he gets an advice from one of his peers showing that he is thinking and pondering. This not only helps the viewer to understand what the character is thinking but the audience can get to know more about the character as the story
“What was the last thing she saw?...Hatred. Just Hatred. Blind Hatred” Good afternoon students and teachers,the purpose of my speech today is to help and inform you, on how characterization has been used to enhance the meaning of the play, “The Property of the Clan” by Nick Enright and the movie “Mean Girls” directed by Mark Waters. It is through techniques that have helped me understand the relationships, personalities and the alienation of young women and men. Now, in these 4 minutes I will briefly, yet, thoroughly explain how these techniques can give you a greater understanding of the texts and hopefully help you on your upcoming exam.
The teacher was told that the object of the experiment was to study the effects of punishment on learning. They are also told that their role in the experiment was to read word lists to the learner and the learner must remember the second word from a list of word pairs they had read earlier. If the learner got the answer wrong, then the teacher was told to administer shocks, for each answer that the learner got wrong, and the shocks had to increase in intensity. The teacher is unaware of the fact that the learner is actually an actor, and receives no shock. The experiments, involving the Undergrad students from Yale, resulted in 60
Keating believed in his students to be extraordinary free thinkers. At one point in the film, he encouraged his students to rip out a page in their textbook that spoke about how to read and write poetry. His reason: He thought the text to be “excrement”. One cannot tell someone who to read and how to write poetry. “Boys, you must strive to find your own voice.