O Captain! My Captain!: Remembering the Keatings of our lives

Few professions shape as many lives as teaching, yet teachers are often among the least celebrated people in those lives.

They teach the people who will one day run our hospitals, courts, institutions, newsrooms and businesses. They introduce children to ideas that may stay with them for decades. Yet the work is often underpaid, overworked and taken for granted.

World Teachers' Day, observed every 5 October since 1994, marks the adoption of the 1966 ILO/Unesco Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers, which outlined their rights, responsibilities and professional standards. It also highlights the support and working conditions teachers need to do their jobs well.

But beyond policies, recommendations and annual celebrations, there is another way to think about what teachers give us.

Sometimes, years after leaving a classroom, you remember a teacher not because of the lesson they taught, but because of how they made you feel.

You remember the teacher who noticed that you were quiet. The one who told you that your writing was good. The one who encouraged you to apply somewhere you thought was beyond your reach. The one who made a mistake feels like something you could learn from rather than something to be ashamed of. For many of us, those are the lessons that last.

A different kind of classroom

There is a reason Dead Poets Society has remained such a beloved film about teachers.

Set at Welton Academy, an elite all-boys boarding school, the film follows students who are expected to become the kind of successful men their parents have already imagined for them. Medicine, banking, law, respectable careers, respectable lives.

Then John Keating arrives to teach English.

He playfully asks his students to call him "O Captain! My Captain!" and leads them past photographs of former Welton students. The faces staring back at them were once young too. Keating tells them to look closely. Those boys had dreams, he says, but time does not wait.

"Carpe diem" — seize the day. 

The lesson means something different to each student.

Todd Anderson is painfully shy, terrified of speaking and convinced that whatever he says will not be good enough. Neil Perry is more confident but trapped by a father who has already decided what his son's life should look like.

Keating does not simply teach them poetry. He gives them permission to look at their lives differently.

The boys revive the secret Dead Poets Society, meeting at night in a cave to read poems aloud. Poetry, which had been another subject to study and memorise, becomes something they experience for themselves.

When Todd refuses to submit a poem because he is afraid it will be terrible, Keating does not humiliate him. Instead, he draws a poem out of him through improvisation, until the boy who could barely speak is standing in front of the class with something of his own to say.

Neil finds the courage to audition for a play, despite his father's disapproval.

The boys begin asking a question that their education had rarely encouraged them to ask, "What do I want?"

That is the quiet power of Keating as a teacher who tries to make his students see themselves as people capable of making choices.

Later, when Keating is dismissed after being blamed for a tragedy, Todd — the same boy who once struggled to speak — climbs onto his desk and calls out to him. One by one, his classmates follow.

It is a small act of defiance, but also an expression of gratitude. The teacher has changed them. They want him to know it.

"Carpe diem" has stayed with me since I first watched the film. It made me a little more willing to try things even when I was unsure how they would turn out.

Perhaps that is one of the gifts of a great teacher: not certainty, but courage.

Cinema gives us Mr Keating. Real life gives us many others.

My Mr Keating

For me, the teacher who has had the greatest influence on my life is my father.

Many parents try to protect their children by making the world smaller, keeping them within the boundaries of what feels safe and familiar. My father did the opposite.

He placed the whole map in my hands and trusted me to read it — and, eventually, to travel it.

My love for literature came to me through him. Because of him, I never learned to think of my world as small. A book from another country could feel like a neighbour. A poet from another century could feel like an old friend. He never clipped my wings. He was never frightened by the heights I might reach or the distance I might travel. He simply wanted me to keep looking up.

Whatever path I choose, he is there, cheering me on.

Today, I read and write because of him. Whenever a new opportunity opens a door for me, I think of the man who first showed me that doors existed.

He gave me the courage to ask questions, the curiosity to keep looking and a sky wide enough for every dream I dared to chase.

My father is my Mr Keating.

And I know I am not the only one who carries a teacher with them long after leaving the classroom.

"They planted a dream in me"

TBS asked university students about the teachers who changed them and left a lasting mark on their lives.

For Raghib Neehal Deepro, a Mass Communication and Journalism student at the University of Dhaka, there were many.

"Allah has always blessed me with such wonderful souls," he said.

He remembers a primary school teacher whose name he can no longer recall, but whose kindness has stayed with him. Then there was Rebecca Ma'am, who taught him in Grades 6–7 and supported him through a difficult period, even protecting him from bullies when he attended her coaching classes.

After a difficult year at another school, Deepro moved to Siddheswari for Grades 9–10, where he met Hatem Sir, Rebecca Ma'am, Sheuli Ma'am, Hasnain Sir, Tajul Sir and others who, he says, genuinely loved him.

"Hatem Sir and Rebecca Ma'am, without a doubt, motivated me so much," he said. "They helped turn me from that clueless, depressed boy into someone who had hope and a sense of direction. They planted a dream in me."

Whenever they met him, they would tell him the same thing, "Deepro baba, you have to go to NDC, then DU."

Eventually, that became his dream too.

"I honestly cannot put into words how much their belief in me contributed to that journey," he said.

Then there was Tapoti Ma'am in college, who, he said, was "like a mother to the six of us — our little gang."

"He taught me not to be afraid of mistakes"

For Subaita Sitat, a BBA student at North South University, Anwar Sir (Md Anwarul Islam) was more than an English teacher.

"To me, Anwar Sir has been a teacher, a father figure, and a friend all at once," she said.

He taught her English, but more importantly, he taught her how to learn a language without being afraid of it.

He always tried to make learning engaging rather than making it feel like a burden.

Subaita Sitat, student at North South University

What she remembers most is that he never made mistakes feel like failures.

"He never wanted me to feel ashamed of getting something wrong," she said. Instead, he created a space where she could express herself through writing, words and emotions.

"He made me feel that I could say what I wanted to say, even when I was not entirely sure that I was saying it correctly."

That confidence followed her into university.

One day, a professor from Columbia University praised her writing and gave her a very good grade. The professor even hugged her afterwards and told her she wanted to see more of her work.

"For me, that moment was much bigger than simply receiving a good grade," Sitat said.

It felt like seeing the result of something that had begun years earlier, with a teacher who had taught her not to be afraid of making mistakes.

Golam Mohammod Shabbir, a Mass Communication and Journalism student at the University of Dhaka, remembers being an awkward child in high school. Then he met Mr Masud.

"He came into the class one day, introduced himself, and started the class with a joke. We all laughed," Shabbir said.

After class, Masud sir called him over.

"He told me that I looked like I was uncomfortable everywhere I went," Shabbir recalled. "Then I told him that I felt like I didn't belong anywhere." 

Masud sir told him he had felt the same way.

"But the magic is in the journey that changes us and makes us better," he told Shabbir.

He also told him not to give up simply because other people did not understand him.

"That day, he changed the way I lived my life," Shabbir said. "I finally let go of my fear of being rejected by my peers, and I started to evolve into the man I am today."

For Umme Fatima, a Social Welfare and Research student at the University of Dhaka, the answer is simpler.

Actually, Mom is my first and best teacher.

Umme Fatima, Student at University of Dhaka

Her mother taught her how to carry herself, how to recover from difficult moments and how not to lose patience.

"Actually, she is the heroine of my life. I miss her even now."

Oritree Zaman, an Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering student at Rajshahi University of Engineering and Technology, still remembers Shahana Ma'am.

She was a short, petite woman who wore pretty cotton sarees.

"Ma'am was very affectionate towards me. She taught me how to study properly. I became very emotionally attached to her."

Now, as a university student, Zaman still misses her.

"I miss her even now in my university life."

For Mst Jannatul Ferdousy Mitu, a Mass Communication and Journalism student at the University of Dhaka, one teacher changed the way she thought about her future.

She had just entered college and was thrilled to have been admitted to the institution of her choice.

Her college assigned one guide teacher to every 20 students. On the first day, her group met Mr Hayat Ali, who also taught them Civics and Good Governance.

He began by asking them about themselves and their dreams.

Most of the students, Mitu realised, did not have a clear answer.

Then Sir told them, "You are all wearing rose-coloured glasses right now. If you continue like this, you will not get anywhere. If you do not have a dream, what will you do in the future?"

He warned them that they could find themselves "in the middle of an endless ocean, with no idea which way to go".

"Learn to dream from now on," he told them.

The words stayed with Mitu.

She began preparing for university admissions, paying closer attention to her classes and guide meetings.

"Every word he said made me dream a little bigger and gave me a clearer sense of where I wanted to go," she said.

There was another teacher she could not leave out: Maksuda Begum Ma'am.

She taught Mitu why women need to stand on their own feet and how to remain calm and composed in difficult situations.

Watching her made me want to build an identity of my own.

Jannatul Ferdousy Mitu, Student at University of Dhaka

She began to believe she could do something meaningful with her life.

"And I believe I have to make it. I believe I can."

What we owe them

Great teachers do not simply give us answers. Sometimes, they give us the confidence to question the answers we have been handed.

They teach us to doubt, to disagree, to try again after getting something wrong and, eventually, to decide what kind of life we want for ourselves.

That may be the greatest gift a teacher can offer: not telling us who to become, but helping us believe that we are capable of becoming someone.

Dead Poets Society left me with another line I still carry, "No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world."

Perhaps teachers understand that better than most.

A teacher may never know what became of the student who sat quietly in the back row. They may never know that a sentence they said one afternoon stayed with someone for years, or that a little encouragement became the beginning of a career, a friendship, a book, a dream. But somewhere, those lessons are being carried forward.

So this 5 October, think of the teacher you still remember.

The one who made you braver. The one who listened. The one who told you that you could do more than you thought. The one who made a difficult subject feel possible. The one who believed in you before you had learned to believe in yourself.

Send them a message, if you can.

Tell them that you may have forgotten the lesson but you haven't forgotten how they made you feel.