Teacher Guide
Learning goals, teaching notes, and answer keys.
View Teacher NotesPaper & online answer keysDead Poets Society Movie Guide
Choose the format that fits your classroom, then explore the film through focused questions and evidence.
About the Film
A teacher’s approach to poetry encourages students to question convention, while family and school pressures complicate the choices they make. Analyze voice, perspective, and the limits of a simple message about freedom.
Movie at a Glance
- Release year
- 1989
- Genre
- Coming-of-age drama
- U.S. rating
- PG
- Runtime
- Approx. 128 minutes
- Director
- Peter Weir
- Screenplay
- Tom Schulman
- Based on
- Original screenplay; the later novelization adapts the film
- Music
- Maurice Jarre
- Featured cast
- Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke & Josh Charles
- Story setting
- Fictional Welton Academy, New England · 1959
Check your edition when planning class periods; cuts and playback speeds can change runtime.
Content to Preview
- A student dies by suicide; the method is implied and the family’s discovery is distressing.
- Controlling parental pressure, grief, and conflict with school authority.
- Profanity, smoking, sexual references, and romantic behavior involving unwanted contact.
Preview your edition, follow school viewing and permission policies, and provide an appropriate alternative assignment. Suggested grades 10–12 are Teach Arcade’s classroom recommendation, separate from the film’s U.S. rating.
Classroom Connections
Use scene evidence to explore the topics above. Pair historical portrayals with reliable sources, literary adaptations with their texts, and animated metaphors with appropriate factual context.
Film details, advisories & classroom context: Disney Archives: film background · Content advisory (spoilers) · BBFC: detailed case study