Leadership Lessons from the “Dead Poets Society”
DEAD POETS SOCIETY is an inspirational 1989 movie about an orthodox school and a new teacher — Keating — with rather unorthodox teaching methods aimed at making free thinkers of his students. If you haven’t seen it yet, head right over to Amazon or other online sources. It’s an experience you won’t regret.
Youth often lives under the misplaced belief of invincibility, particularly in western cultures that promote individualism as a desirable goal. Nothing seems beyond reach; and, the ability to pursue your own dreams is seen as a birthright. But Keating rudely interrupts this march of youth with an ominous whisper that reminds his entourage of bright young boys that the majority of Welton’s alumni are “now fertilizing daffodils;” and, wonders: “Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable?” The implied answer hovers silently and sadly over the group, as Keating urges everyone to listen intently to the photos of past students on the wall, because they “whisper their legacy to you.”
That legacy is simultaneously inspiring and somewhat depressing: “Carpe diem! Seize the day, boys — make your lives extraordinary” while you may, because time is fleeting. In an instant, while the boys stare at the faces in the cabinet in silence, one of life’s greatest lessons is passed from one generation to the next. A transformational moment! Seize the day. “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may” <1>. Because the inexorable force of time offers us with only a relatively fleeting opportunity to realize our dreams. It’s a stirring scene, touched with a shade of melancholy caused by the mute photos of students long dead, whose promise went unfulfilled as they ended up being merely “food for worms.”
Carpe Diem
Horace (65 BC — 9 BC), the leading Roman poet during the time of Augustus, the 1st Roman Emperor, wrote a series of Odes, one of which said: “Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.“ Usually interpreted against Horace’s Epicurean philosophy with its focus on immediate gratification, the English translation reads: “Seize the day, putting as little trust as possible in the future” <2>, because the future is unforeseen; therefore, one should scale back one’s hopes to the more immediate present, and drink one’s wine. Horace believed that mindfulness of our own mortality is indispensable for realizing the importance of the moment. “Remember you are mortal; so seize the day” <2>.
While other English authors have quoted the Latin original, it was Lord Byron’s use of the phrase in his “Letters” (1817) <3> that first began to integrate it into English:
“I never anticipate. Carpe diem — the past at least is one’s own, which is one reason for making sure of the present.”
Keating also quotes the 17th century English poet Robert Herrick, whose poem “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” <1> extols the theme of carpe diem:
“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.”
Our time on Earth is short. Make the most of it. Carpe diem! Seize the day, while we still may, because tomorrow we will all be food for worms.
Developing the Imagination
Unlike the western youth that wants to blaze their own trail, the eastern youth, boxed in by constraints of tradition and societal mandates, perhaps dreams less — or dreams different dreams that are more aligned with and subservient to societal needs and dictates. But DEAD POETS SOCIETY shows that premier finishing schools like Welton Academy ironically subject the western youth to their own dose of societal control by the dictatorial regimentation of learning and character development that leave little to choice; where it is more important to place their graduates in Ivy League schools than to develop their imaginative capacities.
Like Einstein’s famous words: “Imagination is more powerful than knowledge” <6>, Keating wants to stir the imagination of the students. He wants them to be more than what they envisioned for themselves because their life’s decisions appear to have been taken out of their hands by their well-meaning parents. Neil must go to Harvard Medical School; Knox is already pegged to be a lawyer; and, Charlie is a future banker.
While “medicine, law, business, engineering, these are all noble pursuits, and necessary to sustain life,” explains Keating, “poetry, beauty, romance, love — these are what we stay alive for.” Quoting from Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” Keating reminds the students that “the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse;” and asks the poignant question: “What will your verse be?” Another potentially transformational moment!
Developing Free Thinkers
Keating’s interactions with the students differed from that of the other teachers and tutors on several planes, the primary difference being one of purpose. Consider the following exchange between Keating and McAllister at the dining table, after McAllister had witnessed some rather unorthodox teaching methods in Keating’s classroom (the famous “Rip! Begone J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D. Rip, shred, tear. Rip it out.” scene).
MCALLISTER: “Quite an interesting class you gave today, Mr. Keating.”
KEATING: “I’m sorry if I shocked you, Mr. McAllister.”
MCALLISTER: “Oh, there’s no need to apologize. It was very fascinating, misguided though it was.”
KEATING: “You think so?”
MCALLISTER: “You take a big risk by encouraging them to be artists John. When they realize they’re not Rembrandts, Shakespeares or Mozarts, they’ll hate you for it.”
KEATING: “We’re not talking artists George, we’re talking free thinkers.”
Keating is intent on making the students Think — and, to think for themselves. The parallel with John Dewey <7> — the venerable education reformer — is unmistakable. Dewey held that “thinking is method” <4>; that students’ thinking ability can be cultivated by allowing them to experience knowledge (history, geography, mathematics, etc.) in the context of their own personal experience; and, that “the first approach to any subject in school, if thought is to be aroused and not words acquired, should be as unscholastic as possible.” It is important to “give them something to do, and not something to learn”, because it is through the “doing” that “thinking” will be stimulated, which will lead to learning.
It is a Dewey-like moment when Keating takes his students to the courtyard; and asks Cameron, Pitts, and Knox to walk. “No grades at stake, gentlemen; just take a stroll.” In a short time, the three boys begin to march to the same beat. The other boys soon begin clapping in rhythm with their marching. When Keating brings everyone to a grinding halt, he explains what just happened. He points out that while Cameron, Pitts, and Knox started off at their own pace, soon they fell in line with each other, thus illustrating “the point of conformity: the difficulty in maintaining your own beliefs in the face of others.” Those who weren’t walking ended up clapping in unison, thereby underscoring the same adherence to conformity. Keating explains: “We all have a great need for acceptance. But you must trust that your beliefs are unique, your own, even though others may think them odd or unpopular, even though the herd may go, ‘That’s baaaaad.’” He ends by quoting from Robert Frost <5>:
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
The students understand that only by being out of step with others, will they ever have a chance to realize themselves and their uniqueness.
Welton Academy is intent on creating an army of disciplined robots, steeped in traditional values, and stuffed to their eyeballs with knowledge, marching in perfect rhythm through the venerable portals of Ivy League schools. Keating, on the other hand, is intent on creating “free thinkers.” A conversation with Mr. Nolan further underscores the difference.
MR. NOLAN: “What was going on in the courtyard the other day?”
KEATING: “Courtyard?”
MR. NOLAN: “Yeah. Boys marching, clapping in unison.”
KEATING: “Oh, that. That was an exercise to prove a point. Dangers of conformity.”
MR. NOLAN: “Well, John, the curriculum here is set. It’s proven it works. If you question, what’s to prevent them from doing the same?”
KEATING: “I always thought the idea of educating was to learn to think for yourself.”
MR. NOLAN: “At these boys’ ages? Not on your life! Tradition, John. Discipline. Prepare them for college, and the rest will take care of itself.”
Keating wants the students to think for themselves — on the basis of science, logic and reason — and not be blindly led down the beaten path by authority, tradition, or other dogmas.
Developing an Alternate Perspective
Keating also aims to teach his students the value of an alternate perspective. At a famous moment in the film, Keating leaps up on to his desk, and asks “Why do I stand here?” and goes on to explain: “I stand upon my desk to remind yourself that we must constantly look at things in a different way. You see, the world looks very different from up here.” He then insists on every student taking turns to stand on top of his desk.
Another transformational moment! Another Dewey moment as well!
The deep impact that this simple act created on the minds of his students is borne out in the last scene of the film when half the class defies Mr. Nolan’s authority to pay homage — one last time — to the departing Keating, by standing on top of their respective desks.
How about reading lines of poetry from Walt Whitman while kicking soccer balls? “Oh to struggle against great odds. To meet enemies undaunted.” “To be a sailor of the world, bound for all ports.” “To mount the scaffolds. To advance to the muzzle of guns with perfect nonchalance.” Might that offer an alternate perspective? Keating seems to think so.
Breaking out of the Prison
Keating quietly shows that the only walls that imprison us are often the limits of our own imagination. Did we ever think of standing on top of our desk? Did we let an entire lifetime go by never having read poetry in the mystery of a dark cave? Never belonged to a secret cabal? Do we even think our own thoughts — or are those carefully planted into our brains by tradition, society and a robotic thought process devoid of imagination? Do we even live our own lives anymore — or are our very lives ordained by a destitute, though well-meaning, society bent upon preserving continuity in the name of “Tradition, Honor, Discipline, and Excellence”?
Although Keating never explicitly says so, his methods and example teach the importance of breaking the rules as a controlled experiment. Go ahead and stand on top of the teacher’s desk. Go ahead and rip out a whole chapter from a book. Sneak out in the middle of the night to a strange, dark cave and wallow in the mysteries that life has to offer.
But he cautions: “Sure there’s a time for daring and there’s a time for caution, and a wise man understands which is called for.” He tells Charlie: “Sucking the marrow out of life doesn’t mean choking on the bone…. You being expelled from school is not daring to me. It’s stupid, ’cause you’ll miss some golden opportunities.”
In the ultimate analysis, he says: ‘’We don’t read and write poetry because it is cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion.’’ Literature is much more than mere words on a page. The goal of education is not to garner facts and pursue well-proven goals; the goal of life is not to trace a well-trodden path from infancy to old age; the goal in both instances is to find a decisive passion around which one can build one’s life, even while meeting mundane commercial goals through the practice of a trade. This is an eternal message that shall probably continue to be relevant in perpetuity.
Instilling a Sense of Purpose
The patron saint of the DEAD POETS SOCIETY is Henry David Thoreau, who has sometimes been called an individualist anarchist. Every meeting of the society is supposed to open with a reading of these lines from Thoreau’s “Walden”:
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived… I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life.”
While “carpe diem” underscored the need to act, Thoreau’s lines warned what might happen if one did not seize the moment: what if “when I came to die,” I discovered “that I had not lived.” If the whispered legacy of the dead alumni merely suggested action, the words of Thoreau resonating in the dark mysterious cave spurred some of the boys into action, at least in one instance spiraling into tragedy. (Neil: “…and for the first time I’m gonna do it whether my father wants me to or not! Carpe diem.”)
Keating takes the fall, but the abiding lesson is that the real tragedy of life is purposeless existence. At least some of the members of the now disbanded DEAD POETS SOCIETY do not miss that point.
Leadership Lessons
Transformational Leadership
Keating is a good example of a transformational leader. Not only does he exhort his flock to seize the day, he also quietly opens their minds and hearts to the dangers of conformity that is deeply embedded in the kind of education Welton Academy is doling out to them. The creed of “Tradition, Honor, Discipline, and Excellence” is a hollow one, and the boys know that already, because — in the privacy of their room — they make mockery of the “four pillars”:
NEIL: “Gentlemen, what are the four pillars?”
BOYS: “Travesty. Horror. Decadence. Excrement.”
But it takes a stroll in the courtyard for the boys to realize the menace of compliance that is relentlessly drilled into their impressionable minds by Mr. Nolan and team.
One of the primary leadership lessons is the age-old debate between control and inspiration, between regimentation and motivation, between a transactional reward-and-punishment system as opposed to one that invokes the higher ideals in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs <8>. Keating and the boys show that inspirational leadership, rather than repressive authority or economic inducement, creates the bigger and more lasting influence.
The last scene finds half the class standing on their desks in defiance of authority to give a last salute to “Oh Captain, My Captain”. “Thank you, boys; thank you,” mutters Keating — the last words in the film. What a perfect manifestation of “carpe diem”. The moment is seized. The message etched into history. Both the leader and the followers stand transformed forever. From the unlikely pedestal of their respective desktops, the students thus begin their own leadership journeys. Isn’t this what transformational leadership is all about: to make leaders of all followers?
The irreversible power of words and ideas
We should take special note of the power of words and ideas as change agents. Once exposed to a new idea — set free, so to speak — the learner can never revert to an earlier mindset. Once the students stood atop their teacher’s desk, the need for alternative perspective was difficult to dislodge. Once they stared into the eyes of the dead alumni and listened to their whispered legacy, an archaic old Latin aphorism suddenly became an inspiration for urgent action. Once they heard the voice of Thoreau and the dead poets reverberate from the ramparts of the dark cavern, their imagination was seized forever. One of the most “dangerous” and unalterable things is sometimes an idea. Mr. Nolan realizes it well at the end of the film as he stands surrounded by half the class perched upon their respective desks.
Deep learning experiences
If part of the corporate mission is the “advancement of knowledge, skills, and competencies for the purpose of improving performance within an organization” <9>, Keating shows how that may be best achieved by actively engaging the people in deep learning “experiences” rather than subjecting them to rote bookish learning. Keating’s unorthodox methods provide examples for such experiential knowledge acquisition.
Individual development
The transformation of Todd from a shy, tongue-tied, and reticent youngster to one who suddenly bursts forth into a realization of his own articulate potential is a lesson in personal development. Starting with the exhortation to let loose “a barbaric yawp”, to guiding him through the swamp of self-doubt and stage fear (“There, close your eyes. Close your eyes. Close ’em. Now, describe what you see.”), to the climax (“Forget them, forget them. Stay with the blanket. Tell me about that blanket.”), Keating is just the mentor Todd requires. He bursts forth in a crescendo of artistic expression that amazes most of all, himself: “Y-Y-Y-You push it, stretch it, it’ll never be enough. You kick at it, beat it, it’ll never cover any of us. From the moment we enter crying to the moment we leave dying, it will just cover your face as you wail and cry and scream.”
As the boys begin to clap and cheer, Keating whispers to Todd: “Don’t you forget this” — and he won’t.
The development of individual human resource is not likely to be a cookie-cutter operation. One cannot just throw abundant training material at everyone and contemplate a job well done. The Todds, Neils and Meeks of the corporate world demand individual attention.
Organizational development
When Keating takes his class to the trophy room on the first day of class, he handles them in a masterly fashion as a group: A joke here; a little ridicule there; a little play acting to stir the young imagination. He shows the students what was always before their eyes but they had never seen: the hope and the invincibility in the eyes and faces of the old boys of Welton Academy hanging in the cabinet.
KEATING: “Now I would like you to step forward over here and peruse some of the faces from the past. You’ve walked past them many times. I don’t think you’ve really looked at them.”
As the boys gather around curiously, Keating gently draws a powerful analogy:
KEATING: “They’re not that different from you, are they? Same haircuts. Full of hormones, just like you. Invincible, just like you feel. The world is their oyster. They believe they’re destined for great things, just like many of you. Their eyes are full of hope, just like you.”
And then reveals a shocking truth:
KEATING: “Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable? Because you see gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils. But if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you. Go on, lean in.”
Then he gently, but powerfully, plants the seed of growth: “Carpe diem.” The trophy room was the perfect setting to open the eyes of the students to new possibilities. Many of the students will never be the same again.
Less than Unanimous Approval
Not everybody approves of Keating’s methods. Thomas Benton, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education <10> speaks for the other camp when he says:
“Telling students to tear pages out of their textbooks seems excessive and maybe even a little authoritarian. Today the teacher is a big-hearted liberal; tomorrow he is a demagogue. Today we are tearing out pages; tomorrow we are burning books. I might have been attracted to a teacher like Mr. Keating at times, but my rational side would have agreed with his older colleague, Mr. McAllister, who laments, “You take a big risk encouraging your students to be artists, John. When they realize they’re not all Rembrandts, Shakespeares, or Mozarts, they’ll hate you for it.” Let me decide for myself whether I want to rip pages out of my textbook or sound my barbaric yawp if you don’t mind, Mr. Keating. Maybe I want to learn how to diagram a sentence and write a research paper. Maybe I don’t want to be your idealized version of Walt Whitman, someone who is, nevertheless, easily manipulated for ideological purposes. Maybe I want to be an accountant, and I don’t regard that as wasting my life, thank you very much. Maybe there is something valuable in the traditions of Welton that might be worth protecting.”
All true, Mr. Benton. Keating is indeed quite imperfect. So are the results he achieves: Neil’s suicide, Cameron’s disloyalty, Charlie’s expulsion, Todd’s weakness, and his own failure to make any real impression on the other teachers testify to his imperfection.
But this is not a film about tragedy and failure. It is a highly inspirational and transformative story about what makes life worth living. The one thing nobody has in abundance is time; therefore, one must seize the day, while we still may. The real tragedy of life is purposeless existence: if we were to discover on the day we died that we had not even lived. The purpose of education is to create free thinkers, who learn to think for themselves and break out of step from the herd to realize their individuality. Medicine, law, business, engineering and the practical trades are laudable pursuits that are necessary to sustain life; but poetry, beauty, romance, love are what we stay alive for. Along the way lie challenges, danger, disappointment, success, and failure. But if we seize the day, and carve our own destiny our own way; if we take the steps to realize at least some of our potential, while we still may; the day we die we will not discover that we haven’t even lived. Therefore, carpe diem!
REFERENCES
1) Herrick, Robert (1648) “To the virgins, to make much of time”. A poem from “Hesperides”. Kindle edition.
2) Harrison, S. J. (2007). The Cambridge companion to Horace. Cambridge University Press. pp. 154, 168.
3) Moore, Thomas (1830). Life of Lord Byron. Kindle edition.
4) Dewey, John (1916). Democracy and Education. Kindle edition.
5) Frost, Robert (1920). The Road not Taken. Mountain interval. Kindle edition.
6) In an interview by George Sylvester Viereck, published in the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post, October 26th, 1929, Einstein explained: “I’m enough of an artist to draw freely on my imagination, which I think is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
7) John Dewey (1859–1952), an American philosopher, psychologist and education reformer.
8) Abraham Maslow (1908–1970) was a psychologist who developed a theory of human motivation expressed in the form of a pyramid called the hierarchy of needs, with the largest and most fundamental levels of needs at the bottom, and the need for self-actualization at the top. Maslow’s theory posits that until a man’s lower order needs (like food, water, and sleep) are satisfied, his higher order needs (like friendship, family, and self-esteem) fail to motivate the person.
9) Gilley, Jerry W. & Eggland, Steven A. (1989). Principle of Human Resource Development. MA: Perseus Books Group. Kindle edition (2002 edition, with Gilley, Ann Maycunich).
10) Benton, Thomas (2006). Goodbye, Mr. Keating. The Chronicle of Higher Education (July 7, 2006).
