Character Education in the Dead Poets Society Film

Abstract

Character education plays a big role in the development of a student's character. Not only to be intelligent, education should also be implemented to teach morals to students. There are many literary works that can be made as a good example for character education conduct in schools, and one of those is films. Therefore, this study is conducted to find out the character education values in the Dead Poets Society film directed by Peter Weir. This study is descriptive in design and employs qualitative method with the use of character education rubrics by Lickona (1991). This study identifies the character education values in the Dead Poets Society. Based on the findings of the study, the film depicted all three of the good characters outlined by Lickona (1991) namely moral knowing, moral feeling, and moral action. However, moral faults can still be found in the film in the form of faulty moral actions taken by a few students, which can be made as a media of reflection for the audience. Eventually, this study is useful for understanding the values of character education contained in the film, so that it can be used as a valuable learning medium in the future.