To Know As We Are Known By Parker J. Palmer

According to Parker J. Palmer, in the book, To Know as We Are Known, the Weldon school in the movie Dead Poet’s Society, taught the students to rely on their minds and not their hearts. (Palmer, 5) The chancellor has the “light of knowledge” and he hands it down to the students. This depicts a hierarchical understanding of school leadership as authority figures with all the power and students as followers with no power. True to the setting of the move, 1959, this is a school of Caucasian boys, who appear to be taught that the world is theirs for the taking if they adhere to the prescribed path given to them by school leadership. It is an individualist exploitive perspective. Their pedagogy was extreme objective epistemology. The students
As an example, Neal, played by Robert Leonard had a passion for acting and his father, Mr. Perry played by Kurtwood Smith wanted him to be a doctor. He forbade Neal to engage in acting. He exhibited a “do as I say” posture. This is an example of an overbearing, dominating parent who does not take the time to listen to his child, who is on the cusp of adulthood. Even if, the final determination would be for Neal not to engage in acting, dialogue to help him understand his father’s reasoning would have been helpful. Contrarily, I can sympathize with the father for wanting his son to have better opportunities than he did and from experience, I can share parenting is no easy undertaking. Perhaps Mr. Perry was trying to live vicariously through Neal. In a similar sense, Mr. Keating, played by Robin Williams, was trying to relive his time at Weldon
Keating, defied school rules by not completely teach the subject he was hired to teach. He was to teach English, yet he spent all of his time teaching the students poetry. Palmer quotes Thomas Merton as saying, “the purpose of education is to show a person how to define himself authentically and spontaneously in relation to his world – not to impose a prefabricated definition of the world, still less an arbitrary definition of the individual himself.” (Palmer 12) Palmer describes the conventional classroom where the teacher is active and the students are passive (Palmer, 35), however in the movie Mr. Keating, played by Robin Williams encouraged the students to think for themselves. In teaching them to find their individual voice, he tells them, even forcing some of them, to tear the introductory pages out of the English book. I think this was an extreme method of teaching independence. Why not use the material in the book to stimulate their thinking? This action reflected a dichotomy; passive acquiescence and an assertion of individuality. Although it appears that they were merely following his instruction, their actions conveyed a “going against the grain” attitude as some students readily tore the pages while others were apprehensive until prompted, either by the actions of the other students or the strong push by Mr.