Demystification of Traditional Sacred: A Democratic Individual Perspective in Peter Weir’s Film Dead Poets Society

Abstract

This study aims at analyzing the impacts of the stranglehold of traditional sacred in the education system as depicted in the selected film. For this analysis, Shlomo Wolbe's educational theory (2000) is followed. The education system, as described in Dead Poets Society, spoils the potential of the learners. The goal of self-actualization is neither set forth as a target aim nor achieved. The ripple generated by a new teacher who himself has been a product of the same subverted mode of education ends in his own dismissal from his job. One of the students who truly internalizes the pure sense of learning (contrary to traditional one) could not be accepted by society and hence commits suicide. This study takes Wolbe’s model of democratization of the educational system as a theoretical framework. It was Dewey’s Democracy and Education (1985) that raised a dissenting voice and gave a postulate of democratic individualism instead of rote learning. Wolbe took it to further practical ground in the field of educational development.