A popular high school student, admired by his peers, decides to take a day off from school and goes to extreme lengths to pull it off, to the chagrin of his Dean, who'll do anything to stop him.
Maverick teacher John Keating returns in 1959 to the prestigious New England boys' boarding school where he was once a star student, using poetry to embolden his pupils to new heights of self-expression.
The history of the United States from the 1950s to the '70s unfolds from the perspective of an Alabama man with an IQ of 75, who yearns to be reunited with his childhood sweetheart.