There are films you are better off not touching. They belong to our collective memory, to lessons people believe they have learned, to that lingering feeling of this is who I want to be. Dead Poets Society is one of those films. And John Keating is one of those teachers.

So let me say this upfront, with a spoiler warning: yes, I am going to spoil the film a little in this blog post. With affection. And with reluctance. But I think it is necessary.

Keating, played by the brilliant Robin Williams, is for many people the very embodiment of a great teacher. That image is remarkably persistent. In a recent survey by Teacher Tapp Vlaanderen, teachers once again named him as an ideal.
The rebel. The rule-breaker. The one who wakes students up. Who brings literature to life! Carpe diem. Stand on your desk. Look differently. Dare to think. It is seductive. Especially if you teach yourself.

And that is precisely where the problem begins.

What John Keating does undeniably sets a great deal in motion. He disrupts, opens windows, plants doubt. That is not wrong in itself. Quite the opposite. Good education sometimes needs disruption. The problem is not what he unleashes—and I would happily tear pages out of some textbooks myself. The problem is what he then fails to do.

Keating is a rebel without responsibility.

That insight does not come from an educational handbook, but from something my professor of the history of education, Frank Simon, once pointed out to me: education is not just about the spark, but about caring for what that spark may ignite. Inspiration without guidance is not pedagogy. It is fireworks.

Keating encourages his students to think critically, to resist conformity, to follow their passion. Beautiful. But he also leaves them alone with the consequences. He consistently positions himself outside the system, as if that system were only oppressive and never protective, as if rules exist solely to be broken, not also to offer young people something to hold on to while they search.

And yes, the students flourish. For a while. Until things go terribly wrong.

Keating pushes his students towards ideals that collide head-on with parents, institutions and power structures over which they have little control. Yet he never explicitly takes responsibility for the tensions he helps create. He teaches them how to think against, but hardly how to live with. He gives them no language to carry conflict, no strategies to endure resistance, and no guidance on how to hold on to ideals without losing themselves. And above all, he himself takes very little risk, while his students take all of it.

That does not make him a villain. Not at all. But it does make him a bad teacher.

Good teachers know that it is not enough to show students that things can be different. They also help them deal with what that difference costs. They know that freedom always comes with boundaries. That rebellion without care is not emancipation, but exposure to risk.

Perhaps that is why the film continues to resonate. Not because Keating gets it so right, but because he embodies something many teachers secretly long for: freedom from systems, from accountability, from consequences. But education is not a stage for personal rebellion. It is relational work. With responsibility. Always.

So yes, Dead Poets Society is beautiful. Moving. Iconic.
As an educational example, however? It inspired many of my friends to become teachers, and they are far from alone. That is a good thing. And fortunately, they are all probably better teachers than John Keating. However, only a small group will be as funny as Robin Williams. But more about that tomorrow.

Not every rebel is a good teacher. And inspiration without responsibility is not pedagogy, but an aesthetic pose.