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The impact of a good film or a play can be manifold. They make a person think of some sensitive areas, and makes one reconsider the social role. Perhaps the behaviour of the protagonist or commonly known as the main character may be a variant or an alternative to the acceptance, or his/her behaviour may be unusual. But there may be a significant factor emerging from it.

Though I have seen quite a number of films and plays pertaining to the subject of education, I have not seen a film like 'Dead poets society' (1989) which stirred me and moved me to rethink of the role of the teacher in the modern society.

In this unusual non-formulaic film devoid of physical action and technical gimmicks, directed by Peter Weir we come across a teacher of literature named as Mr. Keating, acted by Robin Williams. He looks quite different in his mannerisms as versus the conventional type. What he does within the four walls of the classroom is visually powerful.

Though it appears to be a common classroom exercise, the manner in which Keating approached the subject is different, for he makes the teaching process lively and creative. He acts his role, or enacts it to the point that a creative spark is kindled inside the extent that they are led to believe that they should live creatively. Then comes a point when to his surprise, a particular pupil takes to theatrical activities, where he becomes an actor.

But the father of the particular boy is driven to dismay, for he wants the son to enter Harvard and become a rich man.

This conflict which is visualized sensitively reaches climax when the son commits suicide and the teacher is found as the person in the background responsible for. The two sides of the society, the conventional and the more modern is brought before us exploring the age old question.

What is education, and how should one teach and what should be taught and to what extent could the classroom teaching provide skills.

On addressing these educational issues the creative filmmaker never makes boredom. The out of the ordinary type of teacher has to leave the school of the conventional type, for he is no longer cared by the principal and the staff in that frame of reference. On discussing the essence and value of the film my son Ravindu said that a great film a day keeps the stress away. A similar teacher is found in another teacher-centred film titled 'The Browning version' (1994) where the teacher who plays the lead role happens to be a scholar in Greek classics. His mission in making students realize the greatness in classics is well understood only by a small student who admires him honourably. But what happens is the negative, for even the wife of the teacher of classics misunderstands him to the point that she leaves him alone.

The classics teacher, Andrew Crocker-Harris (played by Albert Finney) is one of the most sensitive portrayals of a teacher dedicated to his function. The pupil who is touched by his teachings, Taplow (played by Ben Silverstone) whose feelings towards the dedicated teacher to me was more orientalistic than the general modernism in the occident. The two worlds within one culture, the world of dedication and devotion and the world of humdrum business life are made to conflict, by the use of a symbolic cricket scene where 'out' and 'not out' are the catch phrases.

I was also reminded of 'Good Bye Mr' Chips' (1939) a film version based on the novel goes by the same title written by James Hilton. The teacher named Mr Chipping (nicknamed Chips) is also shown as one dedicated to his task, and quite a disciplinarian, but a person with a sensitive palpitating heart. When he retires from the school, when world war breaks up shattering the physical plane of living he is steadfast, and wants to teach what he had acquired over the years. What he oversees when he advances in his age is the fact that most number of growing up men is his pupils, whose names he remembers. The crux of the matter is that he stands up like a pillar torn to pieces, symbolic of the ideology of transience. All in all I felt that the teacher-oriented films are compulsory to see, and an essential creative output for the modern world, where the role of the teacher has to be reconsidered. 'Who teaches what in what manner for what purpose seems to be the under current in these highly creative cinematic works.

All these enable me to think of a post modernistic ideology that goes as: 'the text one writes, the work produces are not in principle governed by pre-established rules, and they cannot be judged according to a determining judgement by applying familiar categories to the text or to the work'.

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