Keating was wrong, deserved to be fired and should never teach again.

I've developed the exact same attitude in recent years. The further from 17 I age I see how misguided 16 and 17 year olds can be and often given to frivolous ambition. That in itself isn't an issue but since these boys were being groomed for specific roles in life the idea that they could guide their own course is simply not realistic. That's just my own opinion.
Even if you believe Keating was correct in his approach he was extremely naive if he thought the administration and the boy's parents were going to sit back and let their kids be subject to that kind of teaching. Noland whether you agree with him or not had already given him a subtle warning.

I think Keating would have made a better teacher at a school where futures weren't set in stone. He could give them a sense of what they wanted to do and guidance counsellors take care of the rest. Perhaps he may even have been suited to teaching English at college level.

We have to show the world that not all of us are like him: Henning von Tresckow.

You're completely right in saying Keating should not have egged on Neil. However in Keatings defense it was only a play that lasted one night and maybe he didn't expect the overblown reaction Neil's dad would have had? I mean seriously, his kid goes in one play and now it's military school for him? But yeah Keating didn't know the fragile state of Neil's relation with his dad and children growing up are just a box full of emotions. They think the present is the only day and do not have the ability to see that there is a future. The dad was a total jerk.

Also Keating didn't encourage the kids to make the Dead Poets Society, they went ahead and resurrected it on their own. I believe Keating even warned them to be careful in what they were doing and not bring any untoward attention unto themselves.

Unfortunately I've seen many times where teachers have the "wrong sort of influence" on students. Like a student from XYZ religion says he might want to be an atheist. The teacher then edges him on and says go tell your parents. What ends up is a major sh*t storm with parents blaming the teacher and school and the teacher and media saying that kids should be free thinkers. BIG REVEAL: Kids do not have a fully developed thinking capacity to become free thinkers. Teachers should just not get involved in some issues. Minor issues like if a kid says I wanna be a vegan but my dad's a Texan and wants me to eat beef three times a day are different. In that maybe the teacher can hopefully put some sanity into the kids brain rather than saying, "Go piss on your dad's grill and eat a baby carrot in front of him."

In the end, the school made the kids say that Keating was responsible for their Dead Poets Society. Keating should have resigned when he knew the witch hunt started. Also Keatings approach should have been: read the books, get your damn grades, and just graduate. Do this free thinking when you're in college.

In real life, people are not good or bad. Keating is somewhere in between, in some ways a liberator and in others a pied piper. However Keating DOES warn them about taking it too far.


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It's not "Sci-Fi", it's "SF"!

"Calvinism is a very liberal religious ethos." - Truekiwijoker

Actually he didn't tell him to defy his father. He told him to talk to him and to explain the situation. Neil never did this. He told Keating that he did and Keating believed him and why wouldn't he?

Just rewatched this last night, and you're completely wrong. Keating didn't encourage Neil to defy his father, on the contrary he encouraged him to speak to his father about his acting passion. Keating also told Neil that if his father wasn't open to it, that Neil should just bide his time until he was out of high school and he could pursue his own interests at that later time. Keating even implies that Neil shouldn't do the play unless his father agrees when Neil says, "But the play is tomorrow night" and Keating responds with, "Then I guess you'd better talk to your dad before then."
How anyone could think that Keating encouraged Neil to defy his father, I can't comprehend. It's like you completely skipped over that scene in the movie...

Do you realize that he's a fictional character? Probably not!

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/d0ib7k/hot_take_robin_williams_mr_keating_character_in/

This isn't as exciting or romantic as standing on a desk or forming a secret poetry-reading society, but it is just as important as inspiring a student and encouraging a love of the subject. These young men were all supposed to be heading to Harvard, Yale, etc., and weren't being served all that well by an English teacher that encouraged them to disregard the commonly-accepted curriculum (i.e. Pritchard's poetry scale) that would have no doubt come up again in college. Keating was so busy teaching these young men about thinking for themselves and blazing their own trail that he left them relatively unprepared for the academic challenges that lay ahead of them.

Now, don't get me wrong: I think the message of the movie and Keating is solid. Young men and women should think outside the box and develop an understanding of self and their place in the world, and poetry absolutely should not be reduced to an academic scale or meter, but that wasn't gonna help these kids when they got into a ball-busting, tough-as-nails Yale undergrad course.

There's a fine line between inspiring a young adult and providing a false sense of the world and their place in it. Keating would have been smart to inspire these kids, yes, but to also make sure they understood that the world they were entering wasn't necessarily ready for it.

And let's just tackle the elephant in the room: he fumbled the Neal situation. It was pretty clear in the conversation Keating had with Neal after the latter claimed to have told his father about the play that this was a lie. Keating should have recognized that this had the potential to blow up in Neal's face, and spoken either to the headmaster or Neal's parents.

Been a while since I saw the film but I have a recollection of Keating telling Neil that it was only a couple of years (of school) before he could do his own thing. To just play along so to speak.

Neil's father is a dick but telling him he is going to military school is something that would kill the soft hearted Neil and drives him to suicide.

Overall though, Neil should have just played along with his dad till he turned 18 and then went out and did whatever he wanted to.

I think Keating got the job because he was a former student at the school. Also notably younger than most of the other teachers. Something which we see the parents (esp Neil's dad) notice at the start of the film when Keating is introduced. They judge him from the very start.