The Dead Poet's Society Part One

This movie is definitely in a very different setting then “Stand and Deliver”. In “Stand and Deliver” the school had no order and the students were unruly. The students in “Stand and Deliver” were a bit older than the students in “Dead Poets Society”. In this movie the school is very prim and proper and the students are forced to be obedient. Even though the movies are very different I saw a lot of similarities in Mr. Keatings and Mr.Escalantes teaching styles. They were both pushing the students in positive ways. They both started their first days at the new school trying to connect with their class. They both made jokes to make learning fun. The difference between them was Mr. Escalante wanted to get his unruly students interested in learning. Mr. Keatings, “being a former student of Helton” wants to teach the students how to be their own person and be able to express their own thought.

Movie Notes:

·         The kids are all dressed in uniforms.

·         The movie is based on a very proper and religious school. The school is known as the best boys school in the U.S.

·         The students are disciplined.

·         Kids are crying because they have to leave their parents.

·         All of the kids are moving into their dorms.

·         There is a group of five boys.

·         Neal Perry’s dad is making him drop the annual this term because he feels he has too many extracurricular activities.

·         First day of school in Science class they are assigned the first chapter and answer the twenty questions in the text. The homework is due the next day.

·         The trigonometry teacher is very stern.

·         Mr. Keating is a new teacher at Helton. He is teaching poetry class. He has a totally different attitude and teaching style than the other teachers. He does not treat the students like puppets; he treats them like real people.

·         Mr. Keating has the boys tear out the whole introduction of their text book. The trig teacher walks in enraged at the boys’ actions until he realizes that Mr. Keating is having the boys do it. The trig teacher is totally baffled at Mr. Keating’s form of teaching.

·         After the boys tear out the pages of their text he tells them there will be no more measuring poetry. He wants them to be free thinkers.

·         The boys looked up the Helton School annual that Mr. Keating was in when he was a student there.

·         They read that he was a part of the dead poet’s society.

·         The boys are planning to go to the cave where Mr. Keating’s dead poet’s society went to read poetry. They want to reform the dead poet’s society. There are seven boys in the group. Their names are:

·         Neil Perry, Todd Anderson, Knox Overstreet, Charlie Dalton, Richard Cameron, Steven Meeks, and Gerard Pitts.

·         The boys sneak out to go to the cave after lights out. They have the book “Five Centuries of Verse.”

·         The next day they are in poetry class and Mr. Keating is making the whole class laugh by telling jokes and talking in different voices.

·         He stands on his desk and tells the class they have to look at things in a different way sometimes.

·         Neil wants to try out for a Shakespeare play. Todd his dorm mate is against it because of what Neil’s dad will say. Todd seems to be afraid to be himself, probably because of his strict upbringing.

·         Neil is trying to get him to lighten up.