Education is a fundamental part of humanity. Education is found in schools, in therapy, and in all sorts of places in the real world. However, because of how common education is, there is no definitive definition of it. When educating a person or group of people, people’s teaching methods come down to what they believe the end goal of education to be. For many, education is an obligation; it is something that we must put ourselves through to understand the world around us.
When most people think of education, they think of it as something fundamentally systematic. Schools have textbooks, therapy teaches breathing exercises, and every other institution has its own rigid textbook to follow. For some, they have restricted the definition of education merely to “systematic instruction”. But the movies Good Will Hunting and Dead Poets Society present a different perspective on education. In both these films, we see education used not as a tool of restriction, but empowerment. For in the end, education is not meant to pull people back; it’s meant to enlighten our experiences.
The most important principle we learn in relation to education is listening. We must listen to the teacher to understand what’s being taught. It is something that we are all taught when young, to listen to our parents. At a very young age, this is understandable because we still don’t know a lot about the world, and thus we need mentors to guide us to good values. Parents, teachers, friends, siblings, they can all be excellent role models to help us grow up with good values. But there comes a time in life when we must realize that we can’t blindly follow everyone; we have to make decisions for ourselves. We have to decide what subjects we take, and on a much bigger scale, what our future job is. We have to teach ourselves how we want to go through life. In all regards, this should be a decision made with full individual consent. But there are many kids who don’t get to decide their future. And this is a fundamental issue illustrated in both films.
The protagonist Will Hunting in Good Will Hunting is unable to realize his future because of the abuse his father inflicted on him while growing up; he feels unable to explore opportunities in life out of fear. In Dead Poets Society, many of Keating’s students, most specifically Neil Perry, have been placed on a path in life that offers little to no time devoted to individual interests. The unfortunate part is that this is something reinforced by general society. Many kids who go through abuse never receive proper assistance, and the educational system can often be inflexible in allowing experimentation.
The result of Will Hunting’s abuse can be best summarized with the hedgehog dilemma. This describes someone afraid of getting close to people, in fear of harming them, leading them to push people away instead. Will sticks with a consistent group of people and never ventures outside his comfort zone. We see Will attempt to cope with his self-imposed chains by engaging in literature and history. And for a while, Will believes that this is all life offers, and is never allowed to live for himself. While Will receives attention because of his gifted abilities, there are so many others who fall into the shadows because they have told others that they don’t deserve this kind of help. And even when Will is recognized, he is placed into another box, this time being pushed into getting a proper job that assists society. And this thread is explored in more depth during Dead Poets Society.
Characters like Todd Anderson and Neil Perry are pushed into highly rigorous jobs by their parents. And throughout the film, we see these parents do anything to ensure that they are not distracted from this path. In particular, Neil’s dad attempts to remove his son from any form of extracurricular activities he is involved in. This reveals the primary motivation of someone like Neil’s dad deciding his son’s direction: reputation. The biggest critique he has of Neil is that he threatens the prestige of his family. It’s an example of how your servitude of others has more of an impact on them in comparison to you. And it’s no different for Welton Academy as an academic system. The school prides itself on such a distinguished reputation that any act of unprofessionalism (such as the newspaper prank) is critiqued harshly. It is actions like these that show that the success of the students is not in service of themselves; it is in service of a rigid academic system. It is in the service of proclaiming the excellence of the school and boasting about high percentages. And academies are not the only institution that focuses on reputation.
All of the jobs Will is offered in Good Will Hunting are in the service of a larger goal. He is offered a job at the N.S.A, with Will himself only being offered the guilt of killing hundreds of people. When you are placed into a job, it’s hard to break out of it. When you decide on a job, you have to make sure you’re happy with it, because it should benefit you as well. Doing something you find meaning in is a lot more valuable than money. It’s also why the lives of each student throughout Dead Poets Society are so important
The time they spend at this school impacts their future lives. Whether Neil gets the chance to do things he loves matters because on the legal/medical path, there isn’t a lot of room to discover if you enjoy another passion. And engaging in passions is an essential part of being happy with one’s life. But parents and teachers dissuade each of them from doing that out of fear of reputation, and as a result, the students believe that the only path in life is one of job paths. They don’t know the concept of living for themselves.
The main thing to observe with each of the given status quos is that these characters have been restricted to living in the service of others. And with such a rigid living code, it causes a lot of internal damage, damages a person so that they no longer engage in anything, such as when Will’s hedgehog dilemma pushes him away from the love of his life, leaving him unmotivated. And Neil Perry is placed in a position in which he will have no individual autonomy, leading him to commit suicide. Both of these scenarios are a result of personal guilt, as Will blames himself for his mental damage and Neil believes that he’ll never be able to live life without enjoying that which is considered a sin by his parents. What these movies showcase is the need for something to bring the spark back to the younger generation. And it’s not through one person providing half-hearted advice, or one person teaching them to hold their emotions in, it’s through one person who respects them as individuals and empowers them.
In Good Will Hunting, despite the multiple people who are hired to help Will, none of them are able to break through to him. And that’s for one simple reason, they don’t treat him as an individual. Sean Maguire does recognize him as an individual. The critical moment in which Will decided to take up therapy with Sean happens because Sean uses his moments as an individual to connect to Will’s personal struggle. No therapy worksheet is going to be able to connect to someone as much as raw human experience. Some of Sean’s most powerful moments come from him recounting stories of his past. When most adults talk to Will, they tell him about all the educational opportunities he can have. When Sean talks to Will, he talks about all the wonderful pleasures he can experience as a human being if he overcomes his trauma. If Sean knows Will is being insincere with himself or shielding himself with a Shakespeare quote, Sean forces him to not hide because loving yourself is one of the most important principles to go by in life. “It’s not your fault” are the words that are essential to Will realizing that he shouldn’t be afraid to live his life.
In Dead Poets Society, many of the students struggle with a sense of inferiority, Neil in regards to his father and Todd in regards to his brother. As a result, they feel bound to the school and its rigid discipline. The school does nothing to help with his complex, as they continue piling on pressure by reiterating their high prestige and drowning them in course work. But Keating pulls them up. One of the first things he does is have them rip the pages of their textbook, a sense of breaking free of the shackles placed upon their learning. It is at this moment that many of them realize that it is ok to speak up, to define their own path rather than be restrained. In Keating’s class, they have the ability to define what they create, rather than follow an arbitrary rubric. And in their personal lives, they do the very same. The students are able to accomplish without Keaton’s direct involvement, such as the re-establishment of the Dead Poets Society. Neil and Todd in particular are able to flourish when Keating gives them the necessary confidence. “Seize the day” are the words essential to Keating’s students realizing they shouldn’t be afraid to live their life.
The best quality of these two teachers is that they are role models who encourage individual action. Sean and Mr.Keating give the ability to empower the respective main character(s) of each film by focusing on them on an individual level. Sean doesn’t care about how much knowledge Will holds in his head, he questions whether Will has allowed himself to explore life. Keating doesn’t care how well his students can memorize a textbook, he wants to see what individual projects they can create. These are the types of teachings that allow the younger generation to grow into teachers for the future.
At the end of both films, we see the major life decisions come down to the students. Will is the one to decide whether or not he goes to California, and Keating’s students are the ones who have to decide whether they want to stand against the school. These are critical moments, because up till now, these are characters who were first established as nonautonomous. But they have learned, and they’re happy with the new position they are in. We never see what each of these characters become when they grow up. But if Sean Maguire and Mr.Keating were able to exist in spite of the shackles placed on them, then there’s undeniable hope for these individuals.
Fiction is education. Though the characters are not real, the experiences portrayed on the screen can teach us so much about the struggles that people go through. Mark Twain’s quote: “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t.” has been brought up a number of times in education. And that’s because storytelling is just as valid of a human experience as humanities or science. Sean Maguire and Mr.Keating are inspirational figures, and the actions of Will Hunting and Todd Anderson are empowering. The ideas these characters embody can be integrated into our lives. We can learn not to hold ourselves back, and we can learn to bring others up.
Which brings us to you. To us. The current cohort in college. Soon, we will be the next cohort trusted with teaching the younger cohort. And despite the age of Good Will Hunting and Dead Poets Society, many of the issues in mental health and education are still quite prominent in our current society. We need individuals more than ever. If you are alive, then you have so much to teach. All the experiences that you’ve had over the years, don’t restrain it. The future generation shouldn’t be taught by generative AI on how to live. Anyone can recognize themselves as an individual. Anyone can recognize their peers as individuals, their students.
You are you.
Don’t be afraid to live for yourself.
And don’t ever tell anyone to live in service of others.
“Do what’s in your heart”
“Seize the day”