The time is 1959, the hundredth anniversary of the founding of Welton Academy. Welton is a sort of Ivy League training school. The boys of Welton Academy are dutiful sons, their lives arranged by Mom and Dad like connecting dots. They need only move assuredly from point A, Welton, to point B, Harvard or Oxford, to point C, a prestigious law firm/corporation/band. However, that does not stop their new English teacher from encouraging them to break the pattern. With a contagious passion for verse and a lust for life, Keating exhorts his students to think for themselves. Then avocation that they strip themselves of prejudices, habits and influences.

Dead Poets Society opens with prep-school boys listening to Mr. Nolan (the evil headmaster) extol the four pillars, all that invokes frightful images of coming of age piffle like class. The school's reputation is based on Tradition, Honor, Discipline...