Cross-posted in my Substack, The janovsky Report
Upon its release in 1989, Robert Ebert wrote about Dead Poets Society, “I was so moved, I wanted to throw up.” I’m with Roger. It’s a while ago, but I believe my thoughts on leaving the theater were “phony baloney.” And more importantly, “Robin Williams (as teacher John Keating) helped kill that kid.” The movie was not only treacly, but irresponsible. In the context of Dead Poets, for me Carpe Diem meant “rotten fish of the day.”
I realize Dead Poets is a beloved movie for many. But the year prior to its release, I left teaching high school social studies after 20 years, so I’m entitled to at least a little deference in my critique of cinematic teaching technique. If you’ve been standing there in front of a bunch of adolescents year after year, you know what phony baloney in a classroom is when you see it.
The latest entry in the genre of books and films set in prep schools is The Holdovers, which has the usual ingredients: troubled or idiosyncratic student; inspirational or curmudgeonly teacher; conflicts with tradition, rapprochement and/or sacrifice of some kind.
There are also superficial plot similarities between The Holdovers and Dead Poets: An alumnus comes back to teach at the prep school; Parents make things terrible; The teacher takes the fall for an unfortunate event. But the teaching style of The Holdovers’ Paul Hunham, played by Paul Giamatti, could not be more different from Keating’s. No jumping on desks and ripping out book pages for Hunham. He’s old school, with a severity bordering on sadism. He’s saddled with overprivileged, arrogant rich kids who just have to pass his class on their way to their Ivy legacy spot.
The contrast between them made me think about different teaching styles – something I considered a lot in my twenty years in classrooms. Though neither is a good role model for educators, Keating and Hunham do represent polar approaches. It’s good for teachers to wake up and inspire kids, if not with stunts like Keating’s page-ripping and desk-hopping, then with something that will shake them out of the normal stupor of adolescents. In my first year of teaching, I made a modest effort by coming to my world geography class dressed in something from the country we were studying – a Nehru jacket for India, a Mao jacket carrying a little red book for China. (This was so long ago the Cultural Revolution was still happening at the time.) I’m not sure what I did for the remaining 44 minutes of the period though.
Teachers should also insist on high standards, like Hunham did, though without his inflexibility and gratuitous cruelty. He was the wrong teacher in the wrong school at the wrong time. He was in a no-win situation: Require students to pass by doing a minimum of work; or drop standards and let the Senator’s son get his Princeton legacy spot without knowing the difference between Virgil and the Parthenon.
Teaching style is a function of personality. Hunham couldn’t be Keating and vice versa even if they wanted to be. Education courses and observing others can provide a framework for adapting your style, but only within the outlines of your personality. In education, as in politics, you can’t teach charisma.
I generally have a low-key manner and could not be an intimidating classroom presence even if I wanted to be. This served me poorly in my first three years of teaching, which were in middle school. Survival with that age requires at least some integration of the martinet when in front of 12–14-year-olds. Middle school requires teachers in the mold of Patriots coach Bill Bellichek, not Seattle’s Pete Carroll. I used to joke that while I escaped Vietnam by teaching middle school, it was only marginally better.
The next seventeen years in high school were much better suited to my style. In high school, the challenge in motivation, not discipline. I did my best, like bringing in my guitar and doing “songs of” the Civil War or whatever topic we just finished.
But once a year I taught a lesson requiring my transformation into an intimidating presence. I walked unsmiling into class that day and gave out a list of “New Rules,” such as “Immediate suspension for chewing gum,” “Mandatory student reporting to administration of other students’ wrongdoing,” “Phys Ed replaced by marching drills.” I was stern, unsmiling, and chastised kids for the slightest breach of discipline.
I reviewed each rule in detail, providing whatever rationale I could think of, and kept it up for about half the period. Then I asked the kids to return the “Rules,” tore them up, said, essentially, “Just kidding,” and explained since we were studying the rise of authoritarianism, we would discuss how each “new rule” showed a characteristic of that type of government.
Both the class and I breathed a deep sigh of relief. Not only did I scare them; I sacred myself more. As part of my “act,” I threw out one the best students for looking the wrong way. When I saw him on the verge of tears, I realized I should have let him in on the ruse beforehand. (I hope it didn’t cost him too much therapy.) I didn’t want to be that kind of teacher, and except for that brief time, couldn’t be, even if it meant fewer discipline problems.
So if you’re a teacher, neither a Hunham nor a Keating be. The best teachers lie somewhere between and make the best use of their inherent qualities.