The Schools, The Teachers...Their Similarities, Their Differences...Their Ultimate Success

The powerful warbles of bagpipes resound off the stone walls of the dining hall at Welton Academy as we see a droning sentiment of religiosity being doled out among the men. Welton is plagued by insufferable rigidity; the teachers are strict and lackluster, the parents of students are overbearing and dictatorial, and the students themselves seem to be grasping for control, for freedom.

Mr. Keating pokes his head in the door and weaves through the desks, whistling all the while. He exits the room, whistling still, and pauses for a moment; ”Well, come on!” he whispers. The boys look around at each other in confusion, their eyes filled with wonderment. They follow Keating to a hall in the school where he begins to speak. The short speech he gives commands attention and respect, but more importantly, it lit the flame of passion that would eventually drive his students to resurrect the Dead Poets Society. At the end of their first class, Mr. Keating whispers, "Carpe diem; seize the day, boys. Makes your lives extraordinary.” And that they did.

Now when examining Mr. Keating’s circumstances in comparison to those of Mr. Escalante, the most immediate difference between the two is schools at which they teach. As previously explained, Welton Academy For Boys is a rigid, religious, prestigious school with the intention of supplying a wealth of students to the Ivy League, whereas Garfield was struggling to meet standards and had set a very low bar for their students to meet, if any at all. The pressure at Welton was immense; the students were struggling to please their parents, who had gotten the idea in their head that in order for their children to succeed they had to become doctors or engineers or scientists; and no time could be wasted on frivolous things such as the school newspaper or acting! However the parents were conforming their children to an intellectual box, and inside this box the boys were rattling around, screaming, struggling to break free and be themselves. On the other hand, at Garfield, in most cases the parents were completely absent from the students’ lives, and the pressure wasn’t to do well in school, it was to not do well in school. If you were studious, you were a nerd. If you had good grades, you were a nerd. If you cared about school at all, you were a nerd. And if you were a nerd, you were not socially accepted, and there was no place for you in a gang. Furthermore, the teachers at Garfield were poorly educated in the subject matter which they were teaching, whereas the professors at Welton knew their material backwards and forwards, and lastly, we come to notice that Welton made school the students’ lives, whereas in Garfield school was an afterthought; a joke.

Upon further inspection of the teachers themselves, they of course have the same passion, wit, and knowledge which lit the fire in their students’ minds. Both men utilize unconventional teaching methods that really captured the attention of their students and made them listen. For example, in Stand and Deliver, Escalante strolls into the classroom wearing a butchers cap and wielding a thick German accent as he proceeds to slice an apple in half, while in Dead Poets Society Keating takes the students on a field trip, animates poems using character voices, and gets them riled up, angry, and imaginative. In each movie, we see that the teachers had a way about their teaching that went beyond educating their students about the particular subject. In Mr. Keating's case, when presented with his students’ concerns regarding how poetry could possibly be so important in their own ambitions (i.e. med school, engineering), he validates them by stating that poetry is love, it is passion, it is truth. And that plays into med school and engineering and science and all aspects of life, because it is life.

Escalante and Keating have their differences also, for example Keating has a more intellectual wit, whereas Escalante has a more searing, condescending sense of humor. They teach different subjects, they teach at different schools, they have passion for different properties; however underlying these petty details stand two incredible, inspiring educators. To find teachers such as them is as rare as it is to find orchids in the arctic.